Interview with Himanshu Sharma from SEOtakeaways

As part of our Bloggers Ideas interview series, today we have  Himanshu Sharma who is Google  certified Analytics  expert and currently running his own company SEOTakeaways in UK.  He will be answering various questions related to  SEO, Social Media & other Internet Marketing stuffs . So lets start with the interview.

Himanshu Sharma from SEOtakeaways

Please introduce yourself in brief and tell me how did you enter in SEO. Describe your SEO experience.

Hi! I am Himanshu. I am the founder of ’SEO Takeaways’, a UK based digital marketing consultancy. I have more than 8 years of experience in SEO, PPC and Web Analytics. My first job in the IT industry was of Digital Marketing Assistant and I was responsible for online marketing which also included SEO.

When I started out, SEO wasn’t considered a full-fledged job in itself. Very few people knew about its existence. I wasn’t doing much in SEO either at that time. My daily SEO activity was like stuffing keywords here and there on the website, check the keyword density, check rankings and build links through blog comments and free directories. All of this used to work at that time and everyone was doing it, Google wasn’t that strict either, so I thought this is what SEO is. But over time as my knowledge grew in this field, I realized that SEO is all about providing value to the target audience.

Recommended: Advanced SEO Questions Answered By Michael Martinez

Do you do SEO for any sites that you own? Which sites?

No.

Do you blog, if so where?

Yes. You can check out my blog here: http://www.seotakeaways.com/

Do you currently do any freelance work and do you plan on continuing it?

Yes I do the freelance work. Not sure about the future though.

What do you think the future holds for the SEO industry?

Well, many marketers don’t like to address themselves as a SEO anymore which speaks volume about where SEO stands today and where it is heading. There is no future for the SEO industry as soon there will be not many SEOs left to make up the industry.

Many SEOs of the past are now ‘search marketing consultant’, ‘search director’, ‘inbound marketer’ etc and they all do much more than keyword research, on page optimization and deliberate link building, the domains which are traditionally associated with the word ‘SEO’.

The so called ‘traditional SEO’ in itself no longer serves the demands of the present market and the multi-channel marketing world. So you are asking me the wrong question. The correct question should be ‘what do you think about the future of ‘internet marketing’. And the answer is ‘bright’. As long as people conduct business on the internet, they need internet marketers. Period.

What Internet marketing sites do you read regularly?

I don’t have any preference. I can read any article I find informative from any domain.

Have you attended any SEO conferences?

Yes all the free ones. I still can justify paying a hefty sum for any paid SEO conference.

What SEO tools do you use on a regular basis?’

None. I sometimes use ‘screaming frog SEO spider’ and keyword research tools like ‘ubersuggest’. My focus is mainly on content development and marketing strategies.

What Internet marketing areas are you weak and strong in. Provide examples of both.

Deliberate Link building (like getting links from guest posts, broken link building etc) is certainly not my domain. Whatever I don’t enjoy doing, I outsource it. I do more of what I am good at and less of everything else. Analytics is my domain and I am good in data interpretation and formulating strategies.

What do you feel are some of the most important factors to ranking high in the organic results?

Strong social media presence. People must talk about your brand, day in and day out. More they will talk about you more links and brand mentions you will get. Which eventually means, you need to constantly provide great value to your target audience through content development and marketing.

Have you ever built backlinks? If you have, what kind of strategies do you implement for backlinks? What do you think about link buying, link bait, bookmarks, social links, and other specific backlink strategies?

Yes I built links in the past. Now I don’t. Now I focus on earning links.

I think all these ‘deliberate link building’ strategies can only produce short term results. In the long run, you need to focus on building a good brand, the brand which people talk about on social media 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Here I would like to clarify one thing. By ‘deliberate link building’, I mean acquiring links which you don’t really deserve. If the client is not providing any value to his target audience or refuse to invest in content development and marketing then ‘deliberate link building’ is for him.

What are your thoughts on the future of Internet marketing?

As mentioned earlier, future is very bright. As more businesses go online, the demand for internet marketers is only going to increase.

Do you have experience in affiliate marketing? Explain.

No.

What web analytics programs are your familiar with?

  • Google Analytics,
  • Google Analytics Premium,
  • Omniture,
  • Paditrack….

Have you ever run a PPC campaign? Explain.

I have managed countless PPC campaigns.

Do you have experience doing competitive analysis reports and what tools do you use?

I use SEMRush, compete.com and regular search on Google.

I hope you enjoy this amazing interview with Himanshu ! He had shared his best techniques . For me he is definitely skilled Analytics expert . Thanx a lot Himanshu for accepting interview request for my blog. 

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Jitendra Vaswani
This author is verified on BloggersIdeas.com

Jitendra Vaswani is a Digital Marketing Practitioner and renowned international keynote speaker who has embraced the digital nomad lifestyle as he travels around the world. He founded two successful websites, BloggersIdeas.com & Digital Marketing Agency DigiExe of which his success stories have expanded to authoring "Inside A Hustler's Brain : In Pursuit of Financial Freedom” (20,000 copies sold worldwide) and contributing to “International Best Selling Author of Growth Hacking Book 2". Jitendra designed workshops for over 10000+ professionals in Digital marketing across continents; with intentions ultimately anchored towards creating an impactable difference by helping people build their dream business online. Jitendra Vaswani is a high-powered investor with an impressive portfolio that includes Imagestation. To learn more about his investments, Find him on Linkedin, Twitter, & Facebook.

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Comments (2)

  1. Its quite interesting hearing from Himanshu. There are lots of takeaways from this interview and one that readily comes to mind is his take on link building:

    I think all these ‘deliberate link building’ strategies can only produce short term results. In the long run, you need to focus on building a good brand, the brand which people talk about on social media 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

    I have shared the above comment in the content syndication, aggregation, and social bookmarking website – kingged.com – where this post found.

    Sunday – kingged.com contributor

    http://kingged.com/interview-with-himanshu-sharma-from-seotakeaways-bloggers-ideas/

    • Hi thnxx Sunday, You always been a crucial part of my blgo comments. Himanshu is very skilled SEO expert. I hope you learned a lot from this proficient himanshu. Keep sharing like this !!

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