SEO has multiple roles

Bruce Clay Inc. advocates SEO's increasing importance in the changing times to suit each customer. Here, Retailer talks to Bruce Clay about his business of Optimum Search Engine....

Varun Jain(VJ): Tell us about Bruce Clay Inc.?

Bruce Clay (BC): We started in 1996, at that time, it was a very nascent industry. I have been credited by many for inventing the term Search Engine Optimization. SEO in itself is the heart of internet marketing and needs core expertise. Worldwide, we are commonly referred as the top SEO Company. I consider us the best but there are lots of people out there. SEO itself as a term has evolved and the focus of our business is now more on optimization in general. In my early days, I was GM of the networking division with the Acer. I spent 15 years in the Silicon Valley, doing programming and all, and I have a fair idea about how things in this industry work.

VJ: What forms the core of SEO?

BC: The most important thing about the search engine optimization is that the optimization is done around the persona of the user. You need to understand your consumer. This is what many SEO companies don’t understand. So, the way we do the optimization is to understand  who we are selling to, the community they are in, to understand what they are interested in, what they are going to search for and how they are going to find you.

VJ: How SEO helps the retailers?

BC: The brand loyalty, that used to happen earlier has been eroded somewhat, the web itself is causing the brand to be more in the hands of the searcher than the hands of the company and you have to start adapting to that. In retail world, what we are finding is the stores that are here and believe that their users are interested in particular presentations and particular way of doing it and the people who are designing the websites for the users are not spending the time to figure out what the users are searching for. If I know what you search for, if an SEO knows how you buy, he can tailor your contents and presentation and your position in the internet at a marketing level, to cause every one of those people to come to your website. He can position your brand to be very very strong. And once your brand shows up everywhere in the search result, you, as a retailer, is going to benefit for sure. I have a strong brand within my space and it is because I do the things right and then I tell people about it.

VJ:  In what all countries Bruce Clay Inc. is present?

BC:  We are present in US, India, Tokyo, Sydney and Milan. We will be opening up shortly in Brazil. We will be moving to Italy and Switzerland as well.

VJ: Who are the target audience of Bruce Clay Inc.?

BC: People who have their own in house teams, who want their team to go to the next level of SEO comes to us for training. We have people who have their own websites maybe small or large, they come to us because they understand the critical importance of getting their website acknowledged and then we have people who have other SEO companies, coming for training with us.

VJ: How do you see the competition in the SEO space for Bruce Clay Inc in India?

BC: Very frankly, we haven’t done any research on the kind of competitors we have in the SEO space. There are lots of SEO companies who are present in the market. Let me put it this way, virtually every web designer you go to says I am an SEO expert, but that is not the truth, their level surely differs. It would be like touching the tip of an iceberg. To SEO, there is a lot more than just changing the content and changing the titles.

Yes, there are competitors, but if asked in the same level and caliber; I don’t think we have any.

VJ: What targets you set to achieve say in a couple of years from now?

BC: Within the next couple of years, we want to open our offices in the 4 major metros of the country and we would want to be known as the top SEO Company here.

VJ: What is the cost to avail the services of Bruce Clay Inc.?

BC: It would depend on what kind of plan it is. In the US, we have got enterprise type clients like AT&T, Toyota, Mark and Stuart, CNN etc, but we also have clients who have small and medium businesses, because at the end of the day, they need the service as critically as the big guys.

In India Olive Telecom, which is making waves in the market with their olive pad is already our client. Then we have National Institute of Advertising as our client. Here, we can see that Olive Telecom is a big player with huge business whereas NIA is significantly a small player as compared to Olive. But they both need the services equally and importantly. Pricing will obviously differ because it depends on the kind of consulting, the hours of work required, the amount of work, the scale of the website since some websites are significantly larger, some are smaller.

As a bare minimum, we have a yearly contract, wherein the client has to pay Rs.20, 000 per month to avail our services. And once they are with us, they never leave us.

VJ:  What made Bruce Clay to come to India?

BC: India is massive; it is ahead of China from the point of rollout and distribution. It’s a very large market and I believe it is technologically more advanced market than most of the countries. India has a rapid growing economy and I think the companies here had a better opportunity to grow up their business.

VJ: What kind of marketing strategies Bruce Clay Inc. is looking forward to create awareness?

BC: 100 per cent of my marketing fundamentally is in search. Word of mouth, through conferences. Currently, I am here for a conference. I am not doing a magazine ad neither running a radio or a TV ad, or a newspaper or anything for that matter. The online industry is sufficient for me to establish and maintain a brand.