In Conversation with Pranav Jha Director, AP Web World

The new year, i.e. 2023, has just started, and everyone is busy planning for business strategy to grow in the year. Being present and active digitally is a great bonus for modern-day business. 

We spoke with Pranav Jha, Director of Ap web World to understand how digital can help businesses. 

Tell us something about your professional background and your company

Hi, I'm Pranav, I started my digital marketing journey in 2012. I am an SEO & Google ads practitioner with 10 years of industry experience. Over the years I have worked with a lot of startups and companies in preparing their digital presence. Specifically, I have worked with more than 1400+ clients for SEO and have delivered the results their brand deserves.

I am the founder of the company AP Web World. We have traveled a long road from 1 single desk to a wholly structured workplace, but time, commitment to learning, building a dependable team, and a customer-focused approach has brought us this far. AP Web World is a digital marketing firm that offers a proven & complete 360° solution for all the marketing needs of our National and International clients.

For any business, creating a product is not enough; marketing it to the right customer, in the right way, on the right platform, and at the right time is very crucial! Through Digital Marketing services, our team ensures that every client gets efficient and promising marketing so that they can focus more on innovation.

Today we have 1400+ long-term clients! 25+ team members. We have been praised by many platforms. In the last 3 years alone, we have spent around 3 cr on campaigns and generated 20 cr + in ROI with major industries in Education and Real Estate. And recently, we have achieved the Google partnership badge.Apart from AP Web World, Apart from this, I am also a co-founder of the Professional Institute of Marketing & Strategy ( PIMS ) & marketing director at Writrox- a Resume writing company.

We have seen some strong case studies shared by you on professional networks about SEO, What are your core SEO skills?

The most important skill is the ability to understand and execute the core things of search engine optimization. SEO is all about the technical aspects of search engine optimization, but it's also about strategy and research. It takes a lot of time and effort to master SEO, and it's easy to get overwhelmed by all the different factors that go into it.

This doesn't mean that if you don't know how to code, you won't be able to become a successful SEO.  Here's my list of the core SEO skills you need to succeed:

1. Understanding search engine and its algorithm
2. Content creation & promotion
3. Keyword research
4. Technical SEO (including site speed and mobile optimization)
5. On-page optimization
6. Link building (if you're in-house) or link management (if you're an agency)
7. Domain and brand authority

8.) Analytics and reporting (Google Analytics, Search Console, etc.)

9.) Conversion rate optimization (CRO)

 Tell us what kind of challenges you are seeing in SEO Industry. How do you think upcoming professionals can overcome them?

I have been working in the SEO industry for the more than 10 years and as per my experience there have been lot of challenges that i could see over the time. Google continues to evolve to improve in this area and the main challenges that i can see is not being upto date with the algorithm. I am sure the industry will be changing more and more and we need to adapt to these changes to stay ahead of the competition. We need to go in depth and not miss even minor things. We somehow are not working in thin content, proper optimization like image alt text, focus keywords. We are trying to work with a new set of rules and regulations every day. And it’s not just the regulations, but also the tools, technologies, and strategies that are changing rapidly. Upcoming professionals should keep themselves up to date with all the information and latest updates  and also work on their skillsets minutely. You need to stay up-to-date with everything happening in your industry so that you can provide your clients with the best service possible. 

How do you do link building for local SEO? Do you have a particular mix or formula? Or do you look at the competition and analyze their link profile and then create a strategy?

As per my knowledge the best way to do link building for local SEO is to analyze your competitors' links, and then create a strategy based on that analysis. Once we create a detailed strategy we research for high authority sites to build links for our clients and promote our client's service/brand via images, articles, etc.

The key here is to look at what your competitors are doing and follow suit. You're not trying to outdo them; you're just trying to stay on par with them so that you don't fall behind in the ranking

Have you heard of the trending tool Chatgpt? According to you what will be the role of AI & ChatGPT in the coming days in the SEO Industry?

Chatgpt is a new tool launched by OpenAI. It is an artificial intelligence chat bot that you can send messages and get accurate answers. ChatGPT is not working due to crazy demand but OpenAI's ChatGPT will change society for better. Chat GPT will help businesses to grow, to work with their clients and to put out content in a best manner  

ChatGPT’s AI-based engine will automate your marketing efforts like email marketing, content creation, social media marketing captions, and much more. Nowadays Chatgpt is the most trending tool in the SEO industry.  

According to your industry experience, what are the key factors that help in SEO?

I am a Digital Marketing Consultant having 10+ years of expertise in Advanced Digital Marketing strategies, Retail Marketing, Brand Growth, and Business Development. Also, I have a powerful first-hand experience in growing brands organically through SEO

As per my expertise in this field, I would like to share my views with you all.

•     First of all, you need to choose the right keywords and make sure that there is no duplication. This can be done by using a tool like Google Keyword Planner or SEMRush or any other keyword research tool.
•     Second, you need to make sure to target right pages for right  keywords

• Thirdly, you need to see that your website is responsive and mobile-friendly.

•     You need to have good content on your website because it helps in increasing the time spent by users on your website which ultimately leads to more sales/conversions for you.
•     You also need to keep an eye on your competitors and see what they are doing and how they are ranking for the same keywords as yours. If you find something interesting then apply that technique to your website as well because it may help in improving your rankings for those keywords.

Do you think only backlinking can help someone to be good at SEO for a new firm?

No, I don't think only backlinking can help someone to be good at SEO for a new firm.

There are many things that can be done to improve the ranking of your website in search engines, like we should go for guest posting. Backlinks are just one of them, but probably the most important one.

But there are many other things that you need to consider when you want to rank better in search engines. You need to have good content on your site and your site needs to be fast. You also need to provide a good user experience for people who visit your site by making sure that it looks good and works well on all devices (mobile, tablet, and desktop).  In my 10+ years of experience, the main thing of SEO is what you do on your website, how you optimize your content, how you make people interact with each other on your website, and how you make the content more visible on the front page through social media.