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Search engine optimisers are now in great demand, says Vishnupriya Sengupta

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Have you ever wondered how search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN or even Rediff nearly always throw up relevant results for any search under the sun?

That is a question that crossed Manish Parkar’s mind whenever he sourced information on the Internet. “I always wanted to find out how search engines deliver results against queries in just a few seconds,” recalls the 24-year-old search engine optimiser who works for Mumbai-based Mediaturf — a business unit of Connecturf (I) Pvt. Ltd — one of the leading search engine optimisation firms which specialises in Internet marketing and online advertising in India.

Later, when he joined Qualispace, a unit of QuantumPages Technologies Pvt. Ltd, Parkar discovered search engine optimisers (SEO) played a key role in delivering relevant results, escalating the traffic volume to particular sites which hire their services. “This involves a comprehension of the encoding structure of a web page and generating correct html tags and relevant keywords so that sites which relate to the search show up. I found the job interesting and before long, decided to pursue a career in this field.”

It was a wise move. Today, search engine optimisers (SEO) are much in demand as most software compares such as netramind.com, olive global.com, brainpulse.com, communicate2.com, convonix.com offer this service in India.

“Search engine advertising is growing rapidly and most companies want their names to show up in the top 10 results of search engines like Google,” says Gaurav Awasthy, assistant manager, client servicing, Mediaturf. This is where an SEO fits in. “If he / she can achieve that and generate maximum number of hits for a company, his / her salary increases exponentially and the move up the career ladder becomes easy,” he notes.

An SEO, then, is essentially responsible for marketing a website and should thus know how search engines and directories index and rank websites. Accordingly, his / her sphere of work would include both on-page optimisation that entails re-designing an existing website to increase its traffic volume and off-page optimisation, which denotes submitting information of different companies to various directories.

A graduate in any discipline can join initially as a trainee. But it is important to have a flair for the English language as it involves some amount of content writing. At this level, the salary could range between Rs 5,000 and Rs 8,000, though that largely depends on the company itself.

“An SEO also needs to have some basic technical / programming and web design knowledge, along with marketing skills, which he can acquire on the job. As he / she has to understand and analyse the traffic flow into a particular portal, the ability to adapt quickly to changes in the industry is a bonus,” says Shafaat Karim, who heads the project management division of Calcutta-based All India Technologies.

The good thing about search engine optimisation is that if a SEO is able to cater to the needs of the client, the salary could go up to Rs 50,000 and above in just four to five years, emphasises Awasthy adding, “That’s because the demand in this field exceeds the supply.”

Parkar, perhaps, is a case in point. Having optimised over 20 websites — including the home loan division of ICICI Bank and the travel portal, yatra.com, over the past couple of years — today, he is a project leader and manages a team and handles all practical operations.

“When you work for a client and are able to successfully promote its product online, it gives you a thrill,” says Parkar. This, however, involves considerable research, analysis and a fair amount of knowledge of every segment be it travel, software, real estate, et al as the client could be from any of these segments.

So the challenges can often be daunting. “To ensure that a client figures in the top 10 results on Google, MSN or even Yahoo listings, one is required to understand the services offered by the client, engage in product specific keywords research, learn how to design modifications, generate traffic from referral sites, and understand the traffic flow to the site,” says Ranjita Bhattacharya, an SEO who stumbled into this domain by chance and has, to date, not regretted it. Her search, she says, has been fruitful.

And like Bhattacharya, if you are addicted to the Internet and are looking for a career in the virtual world, your search too could end here.

Sources: The Telegraph (Kolkata, India)