How to Start a Career in SEO in India

The career in SEO in India is reaching new heights. The demand for SEO experts is rising day by day, which is proportionate with India’s expanding advertising industry.  

The ad spending in the Digital Advertising market in India is anticipated to reach USD 2,477million in 2020. Moreover, Search Advertising will be the market’s largest segment, with an expected market volume of USD 944 million in the same year.

Related: Digital Marketing History in India

It was not very long ago when SEO was just a technique in the industry, but now you can hear many big Indian names as SEO experts, renowned globally.  

If you also want to start a career in SEO in India and reach success, there is probably a no better time than now. However, it is essential to understand that the industry trusts and demands only highly trained and skilled SEO experts. Not to mention, SEO is a career that tests your limit, patience, and abilities at every corner. 

So, before you dive into the career of SEO, you must ask these questions to yourself:

• Does SEO/Digital marketing really excite you?
• Are you aware of the future scope of SEO?
• Do you know the skills you need to start a career in SEO?

Your clarity in your vision and understanding will help you pursue the career more easily. Further, this article will help you with all the necessary and meaningful insights to let you kickstart a career in SEO in India.  

Here are the steps required to start a career in SEO in India:

Get Ready for Dynamic Role

While SEO is exciting, it is challenging too. Being an SEO specialist is a dynamic role where you will have to learn new things every day. Also, accept the changes and adapt to them very quickly. 

For instance, Google and other alternative search engines keep tweaking their algorithm with minor updates daily. Significant changes do take place, but once a year only. 

So, you have to be ready to prove yourself and stay ahead of the competition. If you are not well informed of the changes, you might quickly get left behind. 

Learn SEO Skills

To enter into the career of SEO, you firstly need to build SEO skills. Start by learning about search engines’ working and their basic ways of ranking pages in search results. 

Related: Learn How to Optimize Your Site For The Page Experience Update

After that, you can move to this field’s more in-depth technicalities, like on-page SEO and off-page SEO. 

Go a little further and learn about the different terms used in SEO like keyword research, backlinks, SEO audit, black hat SEO, white hat SEO, and more. 

Related: Learn Voice SEO

You must have expert knowledge of social media networks, like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

Gaining theoretical knowledge will help you in grasping everything that the practical programs have to offer. 

Learn the Art of Writing

As an SEO specialist, you will have to optimize websites by making changes to the page title, meta description, headlines, and text content. The changes made on the page should be meaningful and must not change the intent of the page content.

Related: Learn the Art of Copywriting

An SEO specialist should also know how to write emails and blogs. Therefore, your command over writing is very much needed to succeed in the game.  

Related: Learn Direct Response Copywriting

In case you lack the knowledge of the English language, you must start learning at the earliest. If needed, you can go for a short-term course as well.

Build-up Basic Development Skills

As an SEO specialist, you will have to make recommendations to developers about page speed, lazy loading, rendering, server-side redirects, basic HTML tags, and microdata tagging. For this, you need to know what exactly you want to communicate with the developer.

The knowledge of all the advanced programming is not required. But yes, having a basic understanding of some languages can be an added advantage. 

For example, you must know HTML and CSS coding to understand the website structuring. Also, a basic knowledge of JavaScript can help understand the development of the website. 

Learning Python script can be another benefit in adding hreflang to the XML sitemap or a PHP-based web form to build backlinks automatically.

Your ability to work with popular CMS like WordPress is useful too. You will be able to make changes to the titles and descriptions of a page. Plus, you can make changes to other SEO related settings like comment settings, permalinks, sitemaps, etc. 

Related: Best Website Builders to Start Your Website

Learn Using SEO Tools and Techniques

As an SEO expert, you have to be smart and fast, and SEO tools are the way to go. So, you must know the tools available around and also the techniques to use them.

Related: Ahrefs vs SEMrush vs Ubersuggest: Which is a Better SEO Tool?

Knowing the right SEO tools for each step of the workflow also matters. It gives you more power to complete your tasks at a faster pace. 

For example, there are tools to check the website’s speed and usability, like Google PageSpeed Insights, Pingdom, WebpageTests, GTmetrix, etc.

Related: Ubersuggest SEO Tool

Similarly, there are other tools available like Moz to check the local listing score, keywordtool.io to get keyword ideas, Google Analytics to get complete web stats and search insights, and so on.

All these tools are designed to make your work easier and faster, but only if you know to use them correctly. 

Gain Analytical Skills

The work of an SEO specialist also involves tracking, analyzing and reporting on core KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and success metrics by data analysis. 

The given result helps drive editorial strategies, further boosting the business’s search rankings on all major search engines. And all of these are not possible if you do not have analytical skills.

Related: What is Google Analytics 360

You must know how to draw data from different sources like Google search console or Google analytics and then interpret them to form a report. In the process of report building, you should also be able to use applications like Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets.

Take Google Courses and Earn Certifications

The very first step before optimizing pages for Google, you need to understand the basics of Google. If you know how Google ranks the links in its organic search results for a particular keyword, it will be an advantage for you as an SEO expert.

You can learn it through Google’s courses and certifications that are especially designed for SEO professionals, like the basic SEO fundamental course from Google,  the Google Analytics course, and the Google Ads certification.

The SEO courses and analytics courses are a must to understand how Google works and how it tracks data. Additionally, you can also take up the Adwords course to understand how the PPC algorithm differs from the organic ranking algorithm.

Related: How To Check Google Rankings

The value of Google courses and certifications is too high for an established SEO expert. When you gain these professional accreditations, you can display the badge anywhere, showing your proficiency in SEO and AdWords. You will be recognized as an advanced SEO specialist, AdWords user and an expert in PPC advertising. 

Not only these courses and the certification will boost your own confidence, but will also work as proof of credibility, means of free promotion, and build your resume.

Know About Google Webmaster Guidelines

Google rules the global search engine industry. Almost every business wants to rank in the Google search engine. For this, you should know the rules Google sets for its search ranking, which you can find in Google Webmaster Guidelines. If you comply with the guidelines, you will be able to build a Google-friendly website. 

Google is not the only search engine that provides webmaster guidelines. There are other search engines like Bing which has its own webmaster guidelines. 

Be an expert in Google Webmaster Guidelines and create a better indexable and crawlable website to get a higher ranking.

Get Practical Experience

Once you are done with basic theoretical study, it is now time to get some practical knowledge. You can start by building your own website on WordPress using some niche keywords. WordPress is a suitable platform to test your abilities. It is easy to use. Moreover, it offers an array of plugins to finetune your settings and check how your SEO techniques are working. 

Related: WordPress SEO Guide to Fully Optimize Your WordPress Site

Next, you have two options – first, apply for the job of an SEO trainee or start as a freelancer. 

If you want to apply as an SEO trainee or fresher, there are several job portals to search vacant positions. Keep searching for relevant jobs and keep posting your well-written resume. Meanwhile, you can prepare for interview questions. Google can be an excellent option to get a number of interview questions.

Otherwise, if you want to start a career in SEO as a freelancer, you can register for a freelancer account in job portals like Fiverr, Upwork, and PeoplePerHour. These job portals post several requirements every day. Find the most relevant requirement that suits you the best and apply for it. Initially, it is recommended to keep your prices low to get the opportunities faster. 

Working as a freelancer has an additional benefit. You gain experience, which you can use to apply for a higher position. 

Build Your Network

Building a social network can be a powerful means of growing in an SEO career. Connect with as many industry people as you can, like experts, influencers, or even newbies. 

You can find like-minded people on platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Joining communities and groups of the same will also help you to introduce yourself to other professionals.

There are also various SEO forums available to join, where you can engage in conversation to exchange information and improve your knowledge. 

These are the ways you can use to get immense opportunities to grow in your SEO career.

SEO Career in India – Commonly Asked Questions

Is SEO a good career in India? 

Yes, SEO is a good career in India. At present, there are thousands of SEO job openings in India. Freshers in India are offered approximately INR 1.8-2.8 LPA, and SEO professionals having over 5-8 years of experience can make approximately INR 3.5-6.6 LPA. Senior-level SEO professionals with over ten years of experience are offered between Rs. 15-30 LPA or more. The salary of any professional depends on the company size, location, and applicant’s skill set.

Related: Salary of SEO Professionals in India

How much does an SEO fresher earn in India? 

SEO freshers in India can earn approximately INR 1.8-2.8 LPA. The actual earnings are dependent on job location, knowledge, and skills.

Do I need to learn complete digital marketing to become an SEO? 

There is no need to learn complete digital marketing to become an SEO. You can only choose SEO as your specialization. However, learning complete digital marketing can be useful to have complete knowledge. Consider SEO as your specialization and Digital Marketing as your foundation. 

Related: Digital Marketing Scope in India

What is the difference between digital marketing and SEO? 

Here are the differences between digital marketing and SEO:

Digital Marketing	SEO
Digital marketing is a marketing strategy that involves a number of channels like SEO, PPC, SMO, email marketing, content marketing, mobile marketing, affiliate marketing, and video marketing.	SEO is a subset of Digital marketing. It only deals with earning higher organic rankings to drive traffic and leads.
Digital marketing provides both paid traffic and organic traffic.	SEO only provides organic traffic where you don’t have to pay the search engines to get your site ranked.
The cost of digital marketing is  higher.	The cost of SEO is lower.
Leads can be generated instantly using digital marketing.	Lead generation takes time because SEO is a time-taking strategy and one has to wait for at least 3-6 months to start seeing the results.

What are the different SEO designation levels? 

The different SEO designation levels are:

• SEO Trainee/Intern
• Jr. SEO Executive
• SEO Executive
• SEO Team Lead
• SEO Analyst
• SEO Consultant
• SEO Project Manager

In which cities can I find an SEO job in India? 

You can get an SEO job in any city of India. However, some of the popular Indian cities where SEO job opportunities are easily available are:

Delhi	Chennai	Jaipur
Mumbai	Chandigarh	Mohali
Gurgaon	Ernakulam	Indore
Ahmedabad	Bhubaneswar	Coimbatore
Chennai	Surat	Vadodara
Bengaluru	Faridabad	Nagpur
Noida	Lucknow	Hyderabad
Pune	Panchkula	Kolkata

What educational qualification do I need to become an SEO in India? 

A graduate degree is a basic requirement but undergraduates can also become SEO professionals provided they learn all the required SEO skills.

Will SEO still be relevant in the future? 

Yes, the digital industry is expected to grow by 11.83% to reach a market size of Rs. 1,33,921 Crore by 2025.

Also, by the end of 2025, the digital market will grow at a CAGR of 27.4% and surpass the mark of Rs.50,000 crore.

Wrapping Up

SEO has been in the industry for more than a decade or two. So, the strength of SEO to drive organic traffic is apparent. Today, the entire business community is dependent on SEO specialists to rank their brands in search engine results. So, if you want success, you have to become an SEO expert that the industry can trust.

The above-given tips will guide you to pursue your dream and start your career in SEO in India in the right way. In addition, you have to learn every day to expand your knowledge and keep up with this ever-evolving field. 

The tips in this article and your hard work will surely help you scale new heights in search engine optimization.