Interview with Anil Kumar Singh – National SEO Director, Neo Media World

Welcome to another Expert Speaks interview. We have another inspirational personality with us who started his journey as a web programmer and is currently the National SEO Director in one of the finest digital marketing agencies. In this interview, we have with us Anil Kumar Singh.

Who is Anil Kumar Singh?

Anil Kumar Singh did his MSc (Computers) in 2001 and started working as a web developer.

Today, Anil Kumar Singh is the National SEO Director at Neo Media World. He has over 18+ years of experience in this digital industry. He has worked in various companies and is a great SEO strategist.

Anil Kumar Singh has worked for clients from various industries and delivered a lot of successful projects in SEO.

Let us hear begin the interview!

Expert Speaks Interview with SEO Strategist Anil Kumar Singh

#1. I have heard of various designations like SEO Manager, SEO Associate, SEO Consultant and so on. But, when I saw your profile for the first time, I learned about a new designation “National SEO Director”. Can you share with the readers how is this role different from the commonly heard roles in SEO?

At NEO Media World, I am heading SEO nationally and responsible for SEO Operation & Business for PAN India. Hence the designation is “National SEO Director”.

I am managing regional leads to ensure consistency & growth of the company SEO and Content offering across all offices. I am involved in the development of the SEO strategies, help clients in establishing KPIs for their organic search efforts and much more.

It’s not much different when it comes to lead the business & practice.

#2. You have done MSc in Computer Science and started your career as a web programmer. Then what made you switch to SEO? Was it a planned move or it just happened accidentally?

It was not planned. As I was a software engineer/web programmer working on web projects at .com company where most of the work was coming from the US market and then SEO demands also came to me on the same project which I was handling.

It was a big opportunity for me. At the same time, it was a challenge to learn something quickly and implement it. At that time big search engines were – Altavista, All the WEB, Lycos, Excite, Ask Jeeves, etc. 

When I started doing SEO it was an amazing experience with great feeling to see results. After that, I never looked back. It is now more than 18 years now doing SEO. I did SEO for more than 100 Brands as of now.

#3. At Interactive Avenues, you have worked on several projects. Would you like to describe your 3 favorite case studies?

ICICI Pru

We did SEO for them for more than 5 years. We have not only given organic traffic growth but also helped on lead generation via SEO for online insurance buying for some of the products which were only available online to buy.

Organic Search (SEO) was the second-largest channel on Lead generation from the Web.

Micromax

This is a great story. When we started the SEO activity was having image-based content, a major roadblock. Presence of very high competition, with the like of Samsung, Nokia and aggregators occupying the first page at a period of time. Redesign and revamp of the website during the tenure of the project.

We worked very closely with the tech team to change the website keeping search engine crawl ability in mind, we also helped to create content based on search intent and industry top terms. We delivered 91% Keywords visibility in 3 months and 67% traffic growth.

ICICI Bank

This was a very challenging project for us as the market was very much crowded with huge competitions from other leading Banks. Product rank was huge with so many pages to optimize. Another big thing was so many stakeholders (Brand Managers) on the project with high expectations on SEO. 

We met all the Brand Managers separately with the help of Head of Digital and understood the challenges they were facing and how we can work closely towards the goals. We got very good support from all the teams who were involved for the website changes and responsible for online business.

After the hard work of 9 months, we were able to deliver the expectations.  On most of the product keywords we were ranking, organic search growth improved.  We were able to surpass all the banks in 12 months from SEO ranking.  Because of our great work done in the project, we retained this client for 6 years.

#4. How does it feel to work at NEO? Tell us more about your experience at NEO

Neo Media World is a digital-first global performance agency with 1,200 employees across 21 worldwide offices. Working at Neo gives you the entrepreneurial experience with the scale of an established global organization.

The environment encourages a self-starter attitude and takes a lot of pride in the great work that we do. When I joined the India office (in 2013) at that time, the team was very small. Today we are more than 120 and growing.

#5. You are in SEO since 2002. You would have seen the various major updates in SEO. As per you which update disrupted the SEO industry? Why?

The beauty of the SEO industry is it’s dynamic in nature. We love the way things are getting in the right direction.

I have seen lots of search engine update in the last 18 years and industry consolidation when yahoo has acquired Altavista & AllTheWeb and Largest search database company Inktomi after that game has been changed completely. Google was emerging as an alternative search engine that has database support by Dmoz directory with own properties like google news, YouTube video.

Loss of MSN/Bing, Yahoo was the rise of competition search engines.

I have been witnessed of first Google update happen in 2003 which was for keyword stuffing, using multiple sites under the same brand, invisible text, and hidden links.

Mobile update, Panda & Penguin was the biggest from Google in recent years.

#6. Google rolled out the BERT update in 2019. What do you have to say about this update?

BERT is an update on user search intent that depends on the context. It’s all about natural language understating, it helps Google understand what words in a sentence mean.

It’s not as big as it was claimed earlier, but we must understand the changing pattern and technology where deep learning and AI have impacted not most of the results and will continue in the future as well. Now its time to think more when we create content in a natural way.  

Best tips from me: Understanding Searcher Mindset, Identifying a Searcher’s Intent

#7. What are the best ways to build backlinks as per you?

Link building has been changed completely from traditional to new. Google has its own way to measure link juice for the websites. It’s time to be more relevant and authentic when we approach for Links.

Day by day it is becoming hard to get quality links. It’s the best time to think about our branding approach also & think about outreach programs for our products in a natural way to build links on relevant platforms.

#8. What are your views on Podcasts? Are they better than videos? Do they have a scope in the Indian market?

Podcasts have already become very significant to consume content on digital platforms. Google has already said podcasts will show up in search results. More than that growth of voice search and assistant device (Google Home, Alexa and more) will have a huge impact. 

It’s too early to say it will be better than video because it has own set of audience.  With growing connectivity, the rise in searches coming from non-metro cities across categories is faster than that of the metros. Vernacular content will play a major role in podcasts where we will see more stories coming from rural India (Bharat). More original content created by users.

#9. Will video content take over the text content?

As per data, Online video audience in India is expected to grow to 500 million by 2020.

Growth of video platforms like YouTube, the new entry “TikTok” will definitely play a big role in video publication and distribution but Text content is here to stay, will be always leading the digital content.

#10. SEO for websites, ASO for mobile apps or Video SEO – what according to you is the most challenging? Why?

All of these are not challenging. The fundamentals are the same, only platforms are different with consumer behaviors.  ASO has some boundary as it has a very limited scope of optimization.

#11. What skills will you look in a candidate while hiring for an SEO associate role?

SEO is technical so the candidate should have a technical background with marketing as a passion.  Expertise in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Structured data, UX with basic knowledge of CMS.

#12. What is the best way to learn SEO?

Today learning SEO is not a big deal as tons of learning documents are available online. Even Google has its own learning resources about SEO. The best way of learning is by doing it on either your own website or create other digital assets to implement things that you learn.

There are digital training institute as well in the market. One thing you need to understand that SEO is changing every day. So you have to update yourself on a daily basis.

#13. Did you enjoy the Expert Speaks interview?

Yes, very much. It was a well-designed interview. I am sure it will help your audience to learn about Industry.

I think you should talk to digital brand managers to get more insights about how they are using it for branding & performance.

Conclusion

I thank Anil Kumar Singh for his amazing and honest answers.

Dear Readers, I hope you enjoyed reading this amazing Expert Speaks interview with Anil Kumar Singh. He has answered a lot of questions in detail. But, if there are some questions running in your mind, please do write it in the comments section. I will surely try to get them answered by Experts.

Also, do not forget to follow Anil Kumar Singh on LinkedIn – www.linkedin.com/in/anilkumarsingh