Interview with G Rajesh, Blog Editor (Silicon India)

In an exclusive interview with G. Rajesh, Blog Editor of http://www.siliconindia.com/ who talks about the state of SEO in India, and the impact of recession on online businesses.

What is the state of SEO / SEM in India?

In India, a very few people know about SEO/SEM in comparison to other countries. The reason being is that SEO is still perceived as a technological devise of tweaking some keywords and meta tags, and not like a marketing devise that needs a long term strategy. A seo expert needs to be skilled in online marketing techniques, seo techniques, project management, content management, strategy management, as well as understand the search engines changing algorithms. The emergence of various local e-commerce, social and professional networking sites has helped in the evolution of online business in India. I feel that SEO still has a long way to go in India because its potential is yet to be tapped by people and organizations here.

2. How is SEO / SEM helping organizations tide over recession?

Recession has lead to intense competition amongst companies. Only the fittest will be able to emerge out as winners. With the decreasing marketing budgets on traditional media channels (like television, outdoor, radio and print), companies are looking for better and cheaper alternatives like online marketing. In these difficult times, a SEO expert can assist these companies in getting their keywords on the top in search listings, thus driving additional traffic and business.

3. What is the future of SEO / SEM (in India / globally)?

SEO’s future is very bright provided it is used appropriately. I personally feel lack of awareness amongst companies about SEO is basic reason as to why it's limited to few. For the better future of SEO in companies worldwide, employers needs to realise it's benefit in the long term. Refinement in search to get desired result is one thing which will definitely have an impact on the future of SEO.

4. What do you look for in an SEO expert / SEO consultancy before hiring?

Given an opportunity to hire an SEO expert I will look at how well they have done in ranking for their keywords (e.g. if I want to hire a seo expert from mumbai, and I type 'seo expert mumbai' in the search box, the seo expert or seo company I plan to hire should rank in the top 5 in major engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN), and for their clients websites as well. Other things like good knowledge of social bookmarking, article writing, and link building will be an added plus.

5. What is the core expertise of Silicon India?

Core expertise of http://www.siliconindia.com/ lies in providing its users what they look forward to in a professional networking site. We update professionals with recent happening in technological and professional both in terms of quality and quantity.

7. What features are available and what new features do you plan to add to the site to improve its USP and provide better values to your userbase ?

We are India’s largest professional networking website, we aim at giving right direction to power of networking. Popular feature include:

News ( Latest update of both technological and professional front)
Blogs ( Enabling professionals to share their expertise for the benefit of the readers)
Communities ( Linking like minded professionals under one head)
Q& A ( A platform to get all your queries answered by professionals)
Training Videos ( Get accessed to collection of video by Industry Experts)
Education (Giving MBA aspirants a platform to find all relevant information pertaining to MBA)
Job & Careers (Get the information of Jobs not listed any where else)

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SEO/SEM is more Marketing less Technology by Vijay Dalwani

SEO / SEM is not really about technology. Of course there is a bit of programming and technology involved because you are creating a website which needs computers, but this is a very small part of the actual SEO / SEM exercise.

If you look at it from the technology perspective, the person is just selecting a few keywords and putting them in the title, description, meta-tags, starting of the paragraph and in the content. This is because somebody has taught you that this is where the keywords must be present.

SEO / SEM activity however is a fine art which covers marketing and in-depth understanding of the business, product, services and the target customer. First of all, know the product you are marketing. The next step is to ask yourself why you have created the product and for whom. Set the vision for your business or organization. Now you are ready to look for the right market and the right customer.

You can now ask your SEO expert whether you have the right keywords. Will it get more people on your website? Can you effectively combine a few keywords to create a more powerful keyword? Keep asking yourself and your SEO / SEM expert team how can you make people come to your website while searching for a keyword? Linking the interest of the customer with the interest of the business and making it a common interest is the heart of any SEO / SEM activity.

Whether you have in-house SEO / SEM experts or you hire a seo consultant, see if the person is able to understand your business and your customer properly. A proper SEO / SEM expert can tell you accurately what your business is all about, and who your target customer really is. They may even suggest new customer segments that you have missed or never thought of. All that remains is to use the right technology to increase the traffic and reach. This is inevitable if you have already pinpointed what your business product and target customer is all about.

About the Author:

Vijay Dalwani is the Director (Operations) of a UK based healthcare and wellness organization.

In his previous assignments he has been working as:

- VP Operations with TVC Sky Shop Ltd

- Head of Operations with Wonderfulbuys.com (US Based
Internet company)

- Director Operations with Cyberdyne Solutions India
Limited (A software company with a US tie up).

Vijay has been working on SEO / SEM for the last 7 years. He is a people's person who likes to develop people as they are the assets of today and tomorrow. Vijay conducts training programs in SEO / SEM and other topics for budding profesionals. Vijay has a passion for learning new things and can go to any extent to get even 5 minutes of new learning.

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Paradox of SEO / SEM in India by Deepak Chauhan (CIO)

The Indian SEO /SEM story can be divided into 2 streams. On one end, we have a very mature and talented pool of SEO /SEM experts who have cutting edge expertise but it benefits MNCs and other foreign websites rather than Indian websites. Thanks to the outsourcing boom and then due to recession, Indian SEO / SEM experts are often called upon to device better ways to make foreign websites and business models more efficient and cost effective.

On the other hand, we have the nascent Indian online industry .We have few E-commerce sites which can be counted on the fingertips. This is mainly because of low internet penetration in India. This is due to lack of proper infrastructure, bandwidth constraints, as well as immature legal system. The people do not have faith in the legal system because there is no way to address issues that can happen if something goes wrong with online purchase or transactions.

The behavior of Indian customer too is not suited to online business. Even today, a majority of Indian customers buy a product, not a brand. This leads to credibility and quality issue and it is difficult for the customer to know whether the product is genuine and available in correct measured quantity. India needs to transit from product purchase to a brand purchase mentality before its online business and E-commerce matures.

However, the future of SEO /SEM is bright in India because thanks to maturing retail industry, Indian e-commerce websites, too, are slowly making their presence felt on the global internet scene and thanks to a large pool of IT as well as SEO / SEM experts, people are slowly realizing the benefits of online business and online transactions.

Thanks to recession, SEO / SEM is becoming a necessity rather than a luxury. Indian businesses are realizing that there is no way to skip or ignore it. SEO / SEM can even help new upcoming sites or players to feature prominently in search engines and establish global presence and generate more business.

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About the Author

Deepak Chauhan is the CIO of DMCL, an Essel Group of Company which focuses on Internet and Mobile Entertainment solutions. He has more than 14 years experience in Internet domain, especially related to Entertainment. eCommerce and Online Brand consulting.

He has worked with B4U Television before joining Essel Group. He is better known for motivating his peers and his team and taking them to productive heights. Deepak is instrumental in the successful implementation of DMCL's flagship entertainment portal http://www.mypopkorn.com/ and prestigious http://www.veria.com/.

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Mumbai SEO Expert Series - Success with Keywords (Part 5)

For those who have not read Success with Keywords Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4, I suggest you do that now before you read any further.

Welcome to the last installment of the Mumbai SEO Expert Series - Success with Keywords. I hope you have had a great journey so far, and as I had promised we will continue our keyword discovery process and try and find additional keywords that could drive business to my website.

In this article we are going to explore some of the tools and resources available that will assist you in your journey to finding winning keywords.

Each keyword you target becomes a funnel of traffic to your website, each keyword will have competition, and each keyword targeted is potential business.

So the KEY to SUCCESS is in the KEYWORDS you select!

Till so far we have managed to create a list of around 50 great keywords that are focused around my business, my products/services, my target audiences, and my competition.

A quick recap of keywords identified so far…

Seo expert, seo expert mumbai, mumbai seo expert, seo experts in mumbai, seo expert in mumbai, seo expert india, seo experts in india, seo expert in india, seo company mumbai, seo firm mumbai, seo company india,

seo services mumbai, seo services in mumbai, seo services india, seo services in india, seo content services mumbai, seo content services india, seo link building mumbai, seo link building india, seo directory services mumbai, seo directory services india, seo consulting mumbai, seo consulting india,

seo marketing mumbai, seo marketing india, internet marketing mumbai, internet marketing india, seo jobs mumbai, seo training mumbai, seo training india, seo outsource india, outsource seo india, sem mumbai, sem india, sem services mumbai, sem services india,

Seo specialist mumbai, seo specialist india, seo firm mumbai, seo firm india, seo mumbai, seo india, web marketing mumbai, web marketing india, mumbai seo, seo in mumbai.

In the end of Part 4, I had left you with some food for thought …

From the keywords list I have created so far:

1.How many users are actually searching for my keywords?

2.What is the search trend and search volume for my keyword over the past 4 years across top search engines?

3.What competition am I up against for my keywords?

How important do you think it is to know the above metrics? How will the above data assist in planning a seo strategy for my website? How will the above data affect my rankings?

If you are still reading further, you have obviously understood the importance on knowing the metrics of success. So here goes…

The key to successful search engine optimization begins with a simple keyword phrase. Everything depends on that keyword phrase. You'll be including those keyword phrases in your META tags, your title and other important tags, as well as in the body content of the page itself.

I have listed a few tools and links below that I have found very useful in my research:

(This list is dedicated to my partner in the SEO Company, Rajesh, who will smile when he reads this ------> Enjoy)

Google Insights:

Google’s recently launched Google Insights offers search marketers and online businessman a chance to look at the vast amount of user search volumes in Google universe over the past 4 years. With Google Insights for Search, you can compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, and time frames for a keyword, and even compare it against other keywords.

Search by Categories: Narrow data to specific categories, like finance, health, and sports.

Examples: Entertainment category in India (last 30 days) Seo in India in 2008, 2007... The top vehicle brands in France (last 30 days)

Search by Seasonality: Anticipate demand for your business so you can budget and plan accordingly.

Examples: soccer in 2006 vs. 2007 basketball in 2008, 2007,... hotel in 2008, 2007,...

Search by Geographic distribution: Know where to find your customers. See how search volume is distributed across regions and cities.

Examples: pizza in Italy vs. the USA ski in Australia vs. Switzerland soccer in Brazil, Italy, Germany, UK

Wordtracker:

Wordtracker is a Web-based service is a great tool for anyone who is serious about identifying the right keywords. Be sure to check out WordTracker's KEI, Keyword Effectiveness Index, which is an index factor built into WordTracker that compares the 24-hour results (the *potential* for traffic) with the number of competing Web pages to help identify which keywords are most effective. The higher the KEI factor, the more effective the phrase will be, based on the phrase being both popular but having low competition.

Thesaurus.com:

Use a thesaurus to discover keywords and phrases you've never considered.

http://thesaurus.reference.com/
http://www.plumbdesign.com/thesaurus

Yahoo! Search Marketing (Overture):

Offers a Search Term Suggestion Tool, which is available through the advertisers' area. Simply enter your keyword phrase, and you'll learn how many people actually searched for that term during the previous month. This tool won’t tell you how many people are searching for your keyword phrase at other engines, but give you an idea of how popular the keyword phrase is.

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There are many more tools out there; all you have to do is “ask for it”. The above tools will help you get started.

In the beginning, there was a word, and that word was KEYWORD.

For those who have taken the time to journey with me over the last one week, thank you and hope to you again soon.

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