SEO Kolkata Today – How It all began…

I can’t help but believe in destiny when I think of the way I got into SEO. Around five years back, when I took up my first job on Internet marketing and SEO here in Kolkata, I hardly had any clue about what is SEO, or how to optimize a website..for that matter, at that point of time there were very few people in kolkata who knew anything about SEO.

Though I had a First Class in my Hotel Mgmt course and also a job offer from Hyatt Regency, Kolkata, I just felt that hoteleering is not for me .. I was kind of frustrated with rejections from otherjobs (mostly call centers) and was looking for an alternative avenue when I came across the advertisement from 123greetings.com – they were looking for people in their internet marketing team and i made it through with them– then it all began..

It was just three of us at that point and then everyday new members joined their marketing team and the only way we could know about SEO , link exchange and other internet marketing was to study..yes, that is something I hate, but I had to.. and surprisingly enough, I was never bored studying about SEO, Inetrnet marketing, link exchange and related stuff.. (even today!). That was a golden opportunity….being one of the pioneer members of the SEO and internet marketing team of 123greetings.com gave me a lot of scope to study and experiement and learn the basics.

While doing this job, I got some offers from other smaller web dev companies in Kolkata and started working as a freelance SEO / SEO consultant with them. But the money was too less.. 🙁 I am sure most freshers today would prefer to sit back at home rather than working for someone for such a meager salary.. so I was in dilemma, I loved SEO but I needed more money and atlast the hunt was on.. I needed a new job….

Cracked interviews with some call centers and moved on to work with them but didn’t give up on SEO, I was working as a SEO consultant/ SEO freelancer for the Kolkata based web development companies..and always kept myself updated about the changes and updates in the search engines. I spent a nice time in Call centers in Mumbai (almost 2 years), earned good money.. but my heart was lying in something else , I wanted to come back to SEO and Internet marketing…

In October 2004 when I was back in Kolkata for a vacation, one of the companies, Digital Avenues, for which I used to freelance as SEO offered me to join them as a full timer. The offer was there for me for the last 6 months but I never gave it a thought but this time.. they had something really good to offer.. in addition, I was allured by the options of working as a full time SEO as well as staying in my favorite city Kolkata.. thought about the whole thing for a couple of days and then I agreed.

That again marked the beginning of a new chapter in my career and life.. I started working on something that I love to do– had a lot of challenges to win.. and eventually things started to work out.. With decent SEO success on the initial inhouse projects like My Corporate Logo, we started getting external projects which turned out equally successful and now we have a project coming in almost every 15 days. Tiil today I am with Digital Avenues.. from a one member SEO team now we have a growing SEO team of 6 members and am sure there’s lot to look forward to..