A customer searches for your brand or a store nearby. What do they find: a clear, credible business presence, or an incomplete listing that leaves them uncertain?
That question sat at the heart of my conversation with Amit Tiwari on Dilse Omni Talks. Amit is an SEO strategist, educator, and founder of AmitTiwari.net, known for simplifying complex SEO concepts into practical, data-driven strategies for long-term organic growth.
What I appreciated most was his starting point. Local SEO is not only for large chains with specialist teams. Even a single-store business can begin improving its presence through small, consistent efforts.
Our conversation became a useful masterclass in connecting Google discovery, brand trust, store information, and business outcomes. It also challenged a habit I see frequently: investing heavily in advertising while neglecting what customers find after they search for the business.
Table of Contents
Lesson 1: Your Advantage May Be Consistency, Not Budget
Lesson 2: Google Business Profile Is More Familiar Than Its Name
Lesson 3: A Business Listing Also Shapes Brand Trust
Lesson 4: Your Store Locator Should Not Be Your Worst Page
A Practical Framework: Discover, Trust, Connect, Prove
Lesson 5: Publicity Cannot Repair a Poor Search Impression
Lesson 6: Advertising Is Immediate, but Organic Growth Needs a Habit
Lesson 7: SEO Professionals Must Make the Revenue Connection
Lesson 1: Your Advantage May Be Consistency, Not Budget
Amit began with a straightforward observation: many local businesses do very little to maintain their search presence. That creates an opportunity for businesses willing to give it regular attention.
His suggestion was refreshingly manageable. Start with one or two hours each week. For a single-store operator, that makes local SEO a practical routine rather than an intimidating project.
The competitive principle behind it was simple:
“As long as you are beating your competitor, you are good.”
Amit Tiwari
I took that as a reminder to focus on the actual local competitive landscape. You do not need to solve every possible SEO problem before improving the information customers encounter today.
That is not a promise that two hours will secure a particular ranking. It is a practical starting point, especially when competing businesses have left their profiles unattended. Consistent attention can be an advantage when neglect is the norm.
Lesson 2: Google Business Profile Is More Familiar Than Its Name
I recalled a joke from Amit’s early educational content: Google My Business is like a relative whose face you recognise but whose name you cannot remember.
It captures the problem beautifully. People encounter these business listings regularly, yet many business owners do not recognise them as something they should actively manage.
Google Business Profile, formerly Google My Business, is a central part of local SEO. Amit explained the opportunity through the customer: if people can consume your products or services locally, local discovery deserves attention.
That makes the conversation relevant to doctors, stores, food businesses, and other locally delivered services. It is not restricted to one industry or one size of business.
The useful question is not simply, “Should we do SEO?” It is, “When someone nearby needs what we offer, how clearly does our business appear?”
Lesson 3: A Business Listing Also Shapes Brand Trust
When I asked about e-commerce, Amit introduced an important distinction. E-commerce is not the traditional use case for local SEO. But he described using business profiles for clients to strengthen how their brands appear in search.
His comparison was with the information panel people associate with established brands. Search for a familiar company such as Myntra, and the surrounding information helps reinforce its identity. A smaller brand may not have that same presence.
Amit described a business profile as functioning like a small knowledge panel in the customer’s experience. Technically, they are different things. But an ordinary searcher may not understand that distinction.
The lesson is about confidence, not merely visibility. A recognisable brand name and a credible business presence can help a customer make sense of an unfamiliar company.
I would not read this as a blanket instruction for every online store to create a local listing. The underlying local-business context still matters. The broader takeaway is to examine your branded search results as carefully as your website.
Lesson 4: Your Store Locator Should Not Be Your Worst Page
This is where Amit’s perspective connected strongly with my own experience in omnichannel businesses.
I work with brands that began online and are now opening physical stores. Their websites often look excellent. Their product experience is carefully designed. Yet the store locator can be the weakest page on the entire site.
That is a serious disconnect. The page intended to connect online interest with an offline location is being treated as an afterthought.
At a previous organisation, a large e-commerce company, we invested substantially in improving the store locator. We created a dedicated page for every store and brought reviews and ratings into the experience. That work helped strengthen local discovery.
Store information and a map bring the online journey closer to a physical location.
Building that capability took around six months with a team of three or four people. Later, as similar requests came from brands, we created Omni Store Locator, a Shopify app designed for this need.
In the work I shared, we saw approximately 30 to 40 percent more visibility for near-me searches for brands. That was an outcome from our experience, not a universal promise for every implementation.
The important principle is broader than the tool: optimise the Google Business Profile, strengthen the store information on your website, and connect the two. A listing and a store locator should support the same customer journey.
A Practical Framework: Discover, Trust, Connect, Prove
Amit did not give this a formal framework name. To make our discussion easier to apply, I would organise the learning into four connected stages:
DISCOVER → TRUST → CONNECT → PROVE
Discover: Help customers find the business through a maintained Google Business Profile and clear local information.
Trust: Pay attention to the brand name, photographs, ratings, and reviews that shape the first impression.
Connect: Support discovery with useful store pages and a locator that links online interest to physical locations.
Prove: Connect SEO activity to business outcomes rather than reporting effort alone.
This is my synthesis of the conversation, not a separate methodology attributed to Amit. Its value is that it stops us treating local SEO as an isolated listing task.
A customer needs to find you, feel confident about you, and understand where to go next. The business then needs to understand whether those improvements are contributing to growth.
Lesson 5: Publicity Cannot Repair a Poor Search Impression
Amit offered a pointed example: brands that have appeared on Shark Tank or received funding, but still present poorly when someone searches their name.
He described searches where an IndiaMART profile appears prominently, while the brand’s own business listing has irrelevant imagery, weak identification, or negative reviews dominating the impression.
His criticism was not that a brand must never receive a negative review. It was that businesses can pursue publicity and paid acquisition while neglecting the basic search presence that helps customers evaluate them.
That is an expensive disconnect. You spend to create interest, but leave the next point of contact unimpressive.
My takeaway was to conduct a simple first-impression audit: search your own brand name and inspect the result as a prospective customer would. Is the identity clear? Are the images relevant? Does the information make the business easier to understand?
Lesson 6: Advertising Is Immediate, but Organic Growth Needs a Habit
I raised a concern that much of digital marketing education seems concentrated on running ads and producing ad creative. Organic discovery often receives less attention.
Amit’s response was candid. Advertising can produce results quickly when there is budget, and that immediacy makes it easier to explain to clients. He illustrated the appeal with a business spending ₹10 lakh and seeing ₹30 lakh in revenue.
That apparent return is easy to communicate. It does not, by itself, explain profitability or the quality of the campaign, but it gives the conversation an immediate commercial reference point.
I compared SEO with Chyawanprash: a regular habit intended to support resilience, rather than something you turn to only when a problem appears. It was a light-hearted analogy, not a medical claim.
For me, the business lesson is consistency. Organic visibility needs ongoing care, even when paid campaigns are generating activity.
Lesson 7: SEO Professionals Must Make the Revenue Connection
Amit did not place all the responsibility on business owners. He also challenged SEO professionals to communicate their value more clearly.
“We are not tying our efforts to the revenue.”
Amit Tiwari
That was an important closing point. It is not enough to say that an optimisation should help. Businesses need a clearer explanation of how the work supports discovery and, ultimately, commercial results.
My practical starting point would be a weekly routine: inspect the profile, check the store information, review the imagery and customer feedback, and identify the weakest connection between search and the store page. Then discuss progress in business terms, not only as completed tasks.
The biggest lesson I took from Amit was that local SEO does not need to begin with complexity. It begins with ownership. Your business may already be appearing on Google. The question is whether that presence is being cared for.
I am Saurabh Agrawal and we come with a new episode on Dilse omni talks every fortnight and cover different aspect of omnichannel with amazing speakers.
