Hi, I’m Manish Pandey
An Electronics & Communication Engineer by education, I’m an SEO Expert from New Delhi, India, nursing a passion for learning how search engines work, how their algorithms are deployed, and how new-age technologies like Machine Learning and Deep Learning help the search engines to replicate a human being. Had I not pursued my dream of exploring my skills in the SEO arena, I would have made a career as a Software Engineer with KEANE (now known as NTT Data), one of the best IT companies out there.
This is me in Perth, Australia for the AIEC conference in 2019.
How did I end up as an SEO Expert?
I can proudly say that I’m one of the proud search engine optimization leaders in India and a technology enthusiast with 17+ years of diversified SEO leadership experience. Having built end-to-end SEO and conversion rate optimization (CRO) strategies for the digital transformation of various companies in different verticals, I have experience working in travel, e-commerce, ed-tech and OTT platforms.
I’ve been blogging since 2006 about my own experiences with search engine marketing, Google algorithms, link building, making money online, and my rumblings on social media sites. I continue to stay amazed at the technology around the web that helps humans in making their life easier and simpler. Frankly, I can’t even dream of a day without the stuff I’m involved in.
My Journey towards becoming an SEO Expert
I coded my first website in the year 1998 and had received a Brainbench certification of Windows 98 Administration by 2000. That was even before completing my 10th standard (2001).
I got introduced to affiliate marketing at a very early age, and if I recall right, it happened around 2000-01 while searching online for money-making ideas. I joined one of the oldest affiliate marketing programs, called SFI in 2001, and got my first paycheck (an affiliate commission) of $38 within a couple of months. It was at this time I wanted to bring in more traffic to my website, and I started exploring manifold ways to bring in more traffic.
A lot of reading and research ensued, and I was on the lookout for free and paid search marketing. I managed to learn a few ways that helped me to grow traffic to my website. I used this knowledge to help others by adding valuable comments on forums, like Jill Wahlen’s High Rankings, John Scott’s v7n, Brett Tabke’s Webmaster World and Shawn Hogan’s Digital Point. This helped me get a few clients from the US and the UK.
These clients were, fortunately, happy with me, and then new clients started pouring in. A slew of job offers followed. I took up a job at my friend Vaibhav Kakkar’s firm Digital Web Solutions, and the rest is history. Over time, I developed a passion for helping others and learned that teams can accomplish far more than an individual can, no matter how smart.
I’m currently the Vice President of SEO at Zee5, a job that gives me a great sense of satisfaction and fulfillment. For, in the beginning, I never knew if this industry would work out for me as it was still in a very nascent stage in the US, leave alone India.
My parents still don’t understand what I do or what it means to be an SEO expert. My mom thinks I work for Google and she boasts to her relatives. Her happiness makes me happy.
When I look back to where I started, I feel things have worked out well for me. But for them, if I could go back in time and change, the only thing I feel I would want to change would be my blogging habit. I’ve not been able to blog consistently, I even lost this domain for a couple of years when I forgot to renew it. But now, I would want to be more active here and share valuable information often.
I sincerely hope you would find the articles and research on my blog interesting and useful. If you have any questions or would like to chat, feel free to contact me. Requesting you guys to bookmark this blog and visit again.
Professional History in SEO:
- Vice President – SEO, Zee5 India. – Presently working here
- Global Head of SEO & Analytics, IDP Education (company behind the IELTS test) – Jul 2018 to Jul 2021
- SEO Head, Urban Ladder – Nov 2015 to May 2018
- Assistant Manager, Online Marketing and later became the SEO Lead at MakeMyTrip.com (India) Pvt. Ltd. – Oct 2012 to Oct 2015
- COO, Troika e-Solutions Pvt. Ltd. – Feb 2009 to Sep 2012
- COO, Digital Web Solutions Pvt. Ltd. – Oct 2008 to Jan 2009
- VP, Search Marketing – Grades Grow Tutors LLC – Jan 2007 to May 2008
Bio:
Full Name: Manish Kumar Pandey.
Father’s Name: Mr R.S Pandey.
Date Of Birth: 17th June 1985.
College: Noida Institute Of Engineering and Technology, Greater Noida, India, 201306.
Degree: B. Tech. Electronics and Communication Engineering.
Aggregate Percentage: 70.2%
Programming Language’s Known: Python, C/C++ and PHP.
Website Creation Applications: Visual Studio Code, Atom and Notepad++.
Website Designing Application: Photoshop.
Other Experiences: WordPress Development, Machine Learning and Data Science
Engineering Summer Internship: 6 weeks summer training in BSNL Mirzapur on Communication Systems, from 15th June 2007 to 31st July 2007.
SEO Work Experience: 17+ years of experience in SEO. Familiar with SEO from the old days (from the year 2002-03) when it was just as simple to get the keyword density right. Then when the days of smart search engines arrived I concentrated on making SEO as a profession.
Coding: SEO competitor analysis tools in Python as a side project & Coded a data base driven software for college’s placement cell in PHP/MySql.
Disclaimer
The content on this blog is mine. It does not represent my employer’s view in any way.