Q. Hey Vikas, I want you to kick things off, just tell us a little about yourself. We’ve got a brief overview in the intro there but can you expand on that a little bit for us?

Yeah of course of course I come from a from India as you know.

I was born and brought up in a small town of India

Then I did my schooling all my schooling there in the small town

After that I prepared for the exams to come out of that small town and then I got admission in Malviya National Institute of Technology Jaipur

It is a bigger town, I got admission in a prestigious college in mechanical engineering branch

So basically, I started my career as a mechanical engineer

Then I appeared for Some interviews with big companies and I got selected in one of them

I got a handSome salary, extra perks drivers, air travel and what not

I was like 22 years old got a good job good salary my family was happy that I am settled now

But Somewhere deep inside I was not happy with these perks and the salary I

I wanted to do Something else Something, more meaningful

I wanted to reach more audience more I wanted to grow more

So in 2008 I started a marketing venture with my friend in Mumbai, it is in India

But we were inexperienced we might have we started Something which we didn’t know how it would how it would work

So the in 2010 it collapsed completely

I was broke I had no savings, no income and to be honest I was nowhere

On top of that I was getting married

So people around me were asking when you are getting married and I was looking for Some job or Something

But I could not go back and do a job that because I had left it two years back

So in 2010 I came back to Jaipur again and I worked on a new skill digital marketing

So from marketing I came to digital marketing in 2010 that’s how it started

I started working on Some forums and started taking freelancing projects in 2010

I got experienced and in 2013 and I hit three thousand dollar a month

Then in 2013 I started Samblogs.com. That’s how it began

That was the beginning of an era for me.

Q. Is entrepreneurship or entrepreneurism in India like is it a common thing? Is that Sort of culturally popular in India as well like States?

No no no

I would say a big no

We here in India, people want to study, they want to do a government job

That’s the basic and biggest dream of

Here in the eyes of people you’re settled if you have a good job

Entrepreneurship is taken as a risky affair. I you are doing entrepreneurship you are taking risk

So most of the people will say you will fail So you don’t go for it.

Better go for a secure job and then earn a good income and that’s how it it goes here

If Somebody is taking extra step and go for entrepreneurship, they will try to hook him up

They will be like go for the job, get good money and live your life like a normal person.

Q. What your first venture that didn’t workout? Was it not digital marketing? It wasn’t SEO or what were you trying to do?

The first venture was like if you understand MLM. It was uh Multi-Level Marketing

If you if you if you know there are Some companies which do multi-level marketing

So I was in multi-level marketing I was selling stuff to the people then I asked them to refer more people

Then they asked more people to refer and that’s how it worked

But it was like I didn’t have experience So it was bound to collapse

So that that’s how it went like we didn’t have any marketing experience

Because I came from a mechanical engineering background I went straight into something which I which I had no clue based on my friends assumption that we’ll do good jobs and like we’ll make Some good money there

But yeah it didn’t pick up.

Q. It was bravery or what but can you tell us more about what pushed you or gave you the energy to switch to a another field that you really didn’t know anything about?

So first if I go back into those days job was my first priority I got it

I even got the highest paid job in my college

Only three people got selected in that company

I was one of them

So I was in highest paid job I did two years job there but what I felt was I could do better

If I utilize my potential somewhere else I can do two times three times better easily than what I am doing right now

And I can have a better life, better control and I can change a few of people’s life as well

It’s not just about me, it was not like I don’t want work I didn’t want to work

I did wanted to do a job but I thought I can do better

I have this potential in me that I can change few lives. So it was a kind of bravery and it was my mindset

So I decided uh I can go into a different field irrespective of what I have done in the past

So one of my friend who was in Multi-Level Marketing already

He introduced me to uh MLM and he told me like there is huge potential in this company and you can or we can earn a lot of money

Money was for the first motivation for me uh then it didn’t work it was not the end of the road

I thought there are there will be more chances and I Somehow I came to know about SEO Search Engine Optimization

And the one day I was surfing on one of the forum and I got a writing job from one person.

I had good writing skills so I was able to deliver it and I got around 20$ as far as I remember

And then a few days later I got another client who gave me another writing job and I earned a few more dollars.

Then I understood if I can earn $20-$30 a day just by writing content then I can easily crack more things.

SEO is not just about content so I went on to check other aspects of SEO, how it works.

How social sharing is done on platforms like Facebook, how social media management is done, how backlinks are made and I worked really hard on it for 2-3 months.

And then about 2-3 months later Ie made a package sand started selling on a forum and started getting orders.

It was a small team and we are managing all the tasks including link building and communication with the clients, delivering the work, ext.

And in order to expand we decided to hire more people.

So that’s how it came to my mind that if 2-3 people can hit $600-$700 then having more people around can easily help us crack $3000-$4000

So once I had the steady income, I knew I could take it anywhere.

If I remember in 2013 I hit my first $3000 and last month we hit around 1 lakh dollars

So that’s how far we have come just because of the mindset, the eagerness to grow

and the passion.

Q. You have two websites Samblogs.com and Grownle.com, which one came first and had the ball rolling, was it Grownle?

No, it was Samblogs.com,

Grownle is still in the pipelines, we have not officially launched it yet.

It will be like a website for digital products.

Samblogs.com is our main agency from where we provide all the SEO Services.

If you go and see we have Free Website Analysis on the website and

We offer various types of services on samblogs.com

For grownle we have other plans, it’s still in the beginning stage.

Q. Can you explain what SEO is in your mind and how business owners should be using it?

I’ll start from the very beginning, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.

And talking about the Search Engine, we mainly talk about Google.

Because 80% of the search engine is about Google.

We don’t even know 20% of the other search engines

So for the small business or websites that are just getting started I would suggest the first thing they should get done is a Keyword Research done.

Because those people know their audience better than me

If I talk about you,  you would obviously know your audience better for your website than me.

So webmasters should know what group of people they want to target, what age group is their audience, which location their targeted audience is in

So you give me a brief about your site, your target audience

And we would do a research based on the input given by you then we will provide you keywords suggestions.

There will be different types of keywords like high traffic, low traffic, high competition, low competition

And you cannot target 100 200 keywords in one shot, it won’t work

So we basically for a small business which is starting out I would say we

start from a low competitive keywords like long tail keywords which are less competitive but they will start giving you traffic

So that you invest Some money you will start seeing the organic traffic very quickly So that’s the first and foremost thing get the keyword research done properly

If you know the keywords you are you are at the first step in SEO

Second is content creation, content is the key

If you have content which is, which is prime as compared to your competitors you have higher probability to rank.

In SEO there are people who use duplicate content or non-informative content and think they will rank but it does not work like that.

You need original, unique and informative content if you want to rank.

Maybe 3000+ words, 4000+ words or maybe more than that.

The more informative content you are writing the better because you are writing for the people, you are not writing for the search engines.

Third and foremost you need are relevant backlinks

So if I talk about myself, I’m in SEO I need links from SEO related websites , people who are talking about SEO.

I need links from them I don’t need links from grocery website right.

So these are the three pillars of SEO:

1. keyword research
2. high quality content
3. relevant backlinks

If you have these three things, you can go way ahead of your competitors, and you can start getting organic traffic.

In just three months you will start seeing the effect of SEO.

Q. Can you tell us how SEO has changed over the years now back when you started?

Back then some people use to put all their targeted keywords in a content block at the bottom of their website and make it as the same colour as the background and call it SEO.

But things have changed now. Nowadays, Google algorithms have been updated and AI has come into picture.

Google has become so smart that you want to outsmart it you will have to be real and authentic.

You cannot fake it, you can add duplicate content to the site and think it will work.

Your website is probably going to get penalized in no time.

So if you want to talk about today’s SEO it’s not just about putting all the keywords in one article, it’s not about that

It’s really about that you are optimizing for intent, for the users, for their queries.

If you are answering the queries of the audience then you will not rank.

And answer it you have to have experience, you have to have real thing.

Your content should be real and authentic with proper tags in the title.

So if you put the content in the right way you are bound to rank.

And if we talk about image in your content you need to have ALT Tag.

If you don’t have it then Google may lower you rank as it’s not good enough for the audience.

But it’s not only about description, there are other factors involved when it comes to ranking.

Such as how fast your website loads, that’s one of the biggest ranking factors these days.

If your website is taking more than 3 seconds to load, users will leave your website.

And there is no point in Google ranking your website since it is taking too much time to load not able to provide users what they want.

And then there are other metrics involved like Domain Age.

For example, when you are starting a website and just started doing SEO then your are not expect to rank that soon.

But if your domain is old, let’s say 10 years then you have higher chances of ranking up high.

Q. So we have got keywords, content, images with right tag and loading speeding. Can you tell us about backlinks. How we can get them?

Sure, I will tell you about backlinks.

I will divide your targeted keywords into two parts.

Let’s say you are a blogger and you have your 5 Main Keywords and you have 5 Long Tailed/ Other Related Keywords.

Both these different set of keywords need different types of links.

It’s not about getting only one type of links, it’s about getting different variety of links.

So for your long tailed keywords you should get for Diversity Links.

As the name suggests these links come from a variety of sources.

For examples, some links from Blogger.com, some form Facebook, some from Article Directories, some are Twitter Shares.

These sites are usually free sites, where anyone can go and build links. You don’t need to access from the domain owner of the website and you don’t have to pay for it.

These are simple to gains but they hold a low value as they are for diversity purpose to help you build foundation for the website.

Now let’s move to your Main Keywords, and for them you should go for high authority relevant links.

For example, I have an SEO website so I  will look for links from websites that are talking about SEO and then I would guest blog there.

These are high value links and for such links I would use my Main Keywords such as “SEO Service”

Then there is Video Marketing where you can make a video and post it on YouTube and then publish it on different Video Networks and hyperlinking it to your website.

So Off-Page is not about getting one link or one type of link. You need a variety of links.

And then we have PBNs, they stand for Private Blog Network.

So for example you want me to make Some high quality links but at the same time you don’t want your competitors not to know about those links

So that he can try to dig your links but he won’t find out your links as these links are hidden by tools.

We buy domains from Godaddy.com through auctions and then we make a beautiful website based on your niche and we host them on different servers.

Let’s say I am giving you 60 links so I will buy 60 different domains, I will but 60 different hosting.

Each domain will have a different theme, different plugin. And I will publish article on each domain based on the niche of your website and link it back to your website.

And all these links will be hidden from crawlers like Ahrefs and Moz.

So you competitor will not be able to find the links you are building and will not be able to use same type of links and will not be able to out rank you.

Q. Is there a way for small business to assess where they stand presently and see if they need to engage in SEO because most of the small business owners are not even familiar with SEO.

Yeah, good question. The thing is small businesses are not aware of SEO, that’s try.

When you start off your business you think I need Google Ads because it will drive me traffic and I’ll get some sales.

But if you really put money into Google Ads you will be paying So much money and you won’t be getting a good ROI

If you do put the same money in SEO for a year, you will be getting 10x traffic at least

But if you are not experienced, you are going to go to google because as it is a more familiar channel

Everybody knows about Google Ads everybody, Facebook Ads etc.

But if you go for SEO you could get 10X ROI

If you want to be in online business you have to have you have to do SEO

Without SEO you can only get paid advertisement from google or Facebook.

But it’s not going to rank your keywords or get much organic Traffic.

Once your rankings start to improve, Organic Traffic is easy.

If you keep you investing a small amount of money in SEO you will you see that traffic will keep on increasing.

Q. Is there a way to audit the website and see how it’s doing in terms of SEO or something you do for your clients?

Yes we offer free audit. For example if you want to do SEO, you are not sure about what should be fixed on the On-Page or what activities should you be doing Off-Page then we help with that

What happens in that case normally people ask for Free Audit

We get a thorough analysis done including what their main competitors, which keywords they are ranking high for, how much traffic they are getting. We get full audit then.

Based on the audit we provide with suggestions as in what changes you need to make in the Title, about the content, loading.

And along with that we recommend a plan such as we would get started with Diversity Links in the first, PBN links in the second, etc.

Q. Who gets the audit done and the suggestions that you make, who implements those changes?

For the On-Page part, we don’t go and make the changes, we provide the client with the audit reports and On-Page Sheet that what changes to be made in the title, content, etc.

Or if the site is not loading properly, if we have to reduce the size of the image, etc all that is included in the Audit report.

For the Off-Page part, my team gets the link building done.

We design the package that we would do xyz amount of links in this timeframe and the link building is done by them.

And all the links are delivered to the client in the Excel Report.

Along with that we also show from where we started in terms of rankings, organic traffic and other stats and where we stand now after the campaign.

If you are working with us for at least 3 to 6 months or more you will get a comparison of stats from where we started and were we stand as of now.

Q. Are there any common mistakes or issues that you come across when you run your audits or when you take on a new client?

Yes it happens there are so many common mistakes like that.

The first mistake I usually come across that people come to me saying that they have done 1 month of SEO work and I invested $100 and they are not ranking anywhere.

It doesn’t work like that, there are 1 billion websites on the internet and you invested $100 in SEO, you cannot rank, you need to stay continuous with it. It is a process.

It is the most common thing I have experiences.

Second would be that they think On-Page doesn’t matter. They will use duplicate content from competitors and expect that they would rank.

You cannot rank this way, you need relevant content, you need to match up with today’s guidelines. It’s 2022 not 2010 that anything work.

Third one would be that people think more number of links means more rankings.

That’s not true. You need to have good number of links but it’s quality over quantity.

If you think you can get 1000 random links and beat your competitor.

But it doesn’t work like that, if you have even 100 links that are of high quality, you have better chances of beating your competitor even though he may have 1000+ links.

These are basic mistakes a lot of people make.

Q. On your website Grownle.com I read the following terms and I have never heard them before, can you explain them to me?

• Average DA 65+
• Average DR 65+
• Acquire SERP

Sure, I will explain it to you.

DA stands for Domain Authority. In old days, there was a metric called Page Rank (PR)

It was by Google itself. Based on the quality of the page, Google used rank them and called it Page Rank.

But the they discontinued it. So community need other metrics to determine the quality of the page and sell the links.

If I am selling links to you, I need to tell you how the quality of links is.

So DA is metrics by Moz.com that means domain authority.

And the other metrics is called DR which stands for Domain Rating coined by another tool Ahrefs.com

So these are two similar metrics which are coined by these two giants that show the quality of a page.

So that we can buy links and have an idea of the quality of the domain we are getting links from.

if I am going to offer you a DA 50 link. So you will think DA50 link is a good link.

And if the DA is low such as 10 then you would think that you need to go for higher DA link.

The higher the DA, the better the quality and same goes with the DR.

These are not Google’s metrics but Google used to have such metrics and since they stopped using it, these tools came up with their own metrics.

So third one was Acquire SERP and the term SERP stands for Search Engine Ranking Position.

It means what is your position in the search results, like 10^th position or 15^th position, etc.

And my services help you achieve higher positions such as 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd.

Q. So you have mentioned a few times that you have read this book called Lost and Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World by Ryan Fishkin?

Yes, I have read and it is a great book, it has changed the way I see the work.

If you guys haven’t read it, it’s an amazing story about how he started his business and Moz.com.

And there was point where he was hiding out trying to avoid his furniture getting reported because he was in such a high duress.

At one point he couldn’t pay his bills, just trying to get by.

It’s an interesting story, you should give it a read.

We have talked about the bravery of how you got into the entrepreneurship, but I wanted to ask something about mentorship. Was there an other person in your life who  instilled with you the confidence. Did you have any positive role modes growing up?

When I studied in my college there were my seniors who had this mindset related to having something of their own.

There is one of my senior who is still in entrepreneur undermine he

He came from my small town as well So after his schooling and graduation he started his own company.

He started his own company, he is in web development.

So he had that mindset I was in continuous touch when I was going through a rough patch So he kind of influenced me in that time frame

If nothing happens I am always there So it was like  it was like his guidance and then he alo gave me a guidance about this SEO industry is about to boom

you can learn about thisindustry and it will I will take you very far from here

So that mindset came from him I still in touch with  him he is one of my good friends

So that was a big boost for my life .

Q. I wonder if you have any advice for those kind of people who are just Sort of overcoming struggle you know putting in the work and you know maybe even finding a career in SEO?

I would say I would ask them have a vision have a big a bigger vision

Don’t just work for