Satyakam Misra owns and leads an amazing team of SEO specialists, designers and developers at his New Jersey based digital marketing agency – WebProSys. He is also an inventor holding many design and utility US patents.
Please introduce yourself and where you work.
Satyakam Misra here, owner of WebProSys – a digital marketing agency from New Jersey, USA. I am the CEO of our firm, primarily in charge of business development, strategy, client management and SEO/SEM.
How do you think SEO has changed over the last 10 years?
SEO is evolving at a rate never seen before. Over the past 10 years, the biggest changes I see are well informed clients and users. SEO used to be tech wizardry or some sort of magic limited to few experts who held hostage the secrets of link building, keyword science, rankings, algorithm updates and so on. Right now, SEO is not an afterthought but a mainstream digital service understood by most online business. Search optimization strategy is now a prime focus on website builds, apps, online marketing and more. This landscape is now lead by experts who share and educate. The negative side of search now is the insane amount of good (and questionable) talent pool across the globe leading to market confusion.
How did you get introduced to digital marketing, more specifically SEO?
Interesting story to share here – I started my company building flash (actionscript) websites and games from my dorm room. Back in those days, flash was the most in-demand “hot” platform and everyone wanted an into or animation or two to engage their audience. And then, boom, flash got sidelined and one of the biggest reasons was lack of SEO support from Google (and of course, lack of support on Apple devices). My business went down considerably and I developed a strong hateful relationship with this “SEO” that was causing the harm. That hateful feeling led to curiosity and self discovery. I took the bull by its horns and got on a path of understanding/mastering SEO with help from peers and competitors. Within six months, my flash website design business evolved into a search engine marketing one. Every since, SEO has been an interesting learning and execution curve for myself. Hate evolved into fondness and business opportunity.
What are the services you provide to your clients?
As a full service agency, we specialize in National/ Local SEO, Social media marketing, PPC, eCommerce website design/development and digital strategy
What strategy according to you will prevail in 2018 for SEO?
Specialized SEO is the new game Mobile + Video (YouTube is 2nd largest search engine in the world), Voice search. Platform specific SEO, Ecommerce and APP based. I have not even touched the impact of big data & AI on SEO – that is on a whole different level altogether. Also, our company is focusing on finding the right strategy of combining Social and SEO towards a winning formula. A multi-channel effort is must nowadays.
What would your advice be to people who are looking to take up digital marketing as a career choice?
Learn. Execute. Repeat. Hands-on effort wins always. Before you start offering services, get in the mindset of a client – be ROI driven and propose value – not just a commodity.