Local SEO Directions: Interview with WhiteLake’s Gunaseelan Nadar

by Prejushya Kalicharan - 4/4/2013 6652 Views

An episode of my interview with the CEO & Founder of WhiteLake Technlogy Solutions

Gunaseelan Nadar is a pioneer in the field of search engine optimization & digital marketing and has had his hands in this much evolving field for the past ten years. His downright knowledge over ‘Local Internet Marketing’ and related Local SEO services has already contributed ample to his organization’s feat. Let us find out what he has got to update us on SEO for small businesses.

Do you think that doing Local SEO & creating Local Business Listings, delimited & reserved only to small/ medium businesses? Shouldn’t corporate & big established companies worry about this?

I don’t think that Local SEO & listing your local store over Google, Yahoo & Bing Maps is reserved only for small or medium businesses. Don’t you think that big corporate players like McDonald’s and Pizza Hut have stores all over the world? Now there arises the need for each big player to mark their stores over maps and make them visible to the world. A collective revenue from these stores worldwide matter a lot to them and hence they should pay attention to optimizing their local networks as well.

Brief the necessity of reviews on a local business? How do they gain a few?

To stay on top among other competitors of your industry, it is very essential that you need believable & compelling reviews on your local business. The trend is far changed now with the intervention of internet. Every other internet user has the opportunity to browse the web for reviews before purchasing or hiring a product or service. In such circumstances, no matter how exceptional you are in your industry compared to your competitors, lack of a great online reputation slides your business by a flat 50%.

Connecting with your loyal clients is the only way to gather good reviews on your business. Quality outsmarts Quantity in case of reviews. This also varies with the business you are into. Restaurants have huge chances of collecting reviews compared to other local businesses. I strongly discourage you from creating fake reviews, since they end-up nowhere & Google is capable of knowing when a new account is created solely for the purpose of posting a review & when huge lots of reviews are posted from the same IP address, across various topics.

Could you share with us some of the most critical factors that you consider while doing Onpage audit for small businesses?

Well, it is a huge topic to cover. I can brief it for you. I have come across thousands of websites which have been treated by novice SEO service providers. Those websites, for which the owners had done pilot SEO projects after having a glance at Google’s starter guide, were the most pitiful among them.

I think Local Onpage optimization should be centered on incorporating the location over the entire website at the best optimized level. For example, Meta Data, URLs, Geo Meta Tags, Headers (preferably HI & H2), Contact Page, Footer, Sitemaps, Images, Videos and Content. Make sure that your NAP over the website matches your Google+ Local info and all other citations. The advisable phone number format is (800) 212-1234. It’s always advisable that your never repeat your keywords more than once in your title tags. You know of over-optimization!

What is the limitation that you decide for the quantity of citations for one particular business?

So far, tons of citation on your local business has not been a problem for Google. But it might come to limelight in future, and yet another algorithm update. I am unable to predict when, but very soon. The reason is the growing popularity of Local SEO, the visibility that Local Business owners are able to acquire & the growing number of Local searches made each day.

How far do you think Local SEO is real knotty & intricate?

Local marketing services were once too easy with very little competition. I mean, before two years. That’s not the case now. Business owners no matter whether they own a small or a big business, are very well aware about Local SEO and benefits it offers. This has in-turn increased & improved competition among each brick and mortar industry. Anything done with minimal or least knowledge will obviously tense you and pulls-back results. Better analysis of one’s industry, identifying the correct key phrases for which you could drive conversions, superior competitor analysis, manual data submissions, identifying the perfect platforms & dedicated approach are all keys to Local SEO success. All my clients till date have never been disappointed doing Local SEO.

That was a clear discussion on Local SEO & Big Thanks to Guna for such valuable key points.

Category :

SEO News

Tags :

interview with local seo, local business marketing, local seo services, local marketing services, lo

About Prejushya Kalicharan

SEO is a challenging field and I try my best to surpass this challenging environment which is unconditionally filled with opportunities, knowledge building and problem solving. I pursue what I .... more info about the author