Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and SEO Industry in Bangladesh

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? A blurry term for many Bangladeshi businesses. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is about optimizing a website for Search Engines like Google to make sure that your site shows up when anyone searches for your important keywords. This doesn’t only mean traffic from search engines; you can also convert the traffic to leads, sales, orders or businesses. e.g. If anyone searched for "Garments Exporters from Bangladesh" in Google and found your site, then there is high probability that the visitor will convert to your customer. Moreover, your website becomes your marketing machine and the impact is worldwide.

Even though, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a much unknown word in the local businesses in Bangladesh. Most of the Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) can't understand what SEO can offer and how SEO can help them in their businesses. They are competing in the direct marketing channels that they got used to. Now, they are not willing to switch to SEO as their internet marketing scheme, unless their competitors do.

In my career in International Businesses, I found a trend that small and medium-sized enterprises/businesses (SMEs/SMBs) in Bangladesh always rely on snatching each other’s customers by employing employees from other competing companies that knows a lot of customers or by going up the supply channel. So, the same customer is bouncing around the country’s suppliers.

However, most companies fail to realize Natural & Organic SEO’s potential and communication cost cutting benefit for business leads (orders), which also can create more customers for the country. Due to unawareness of the potential, the SEO industry didn’t grow in Bangladesh for the local companies, which could have been the opposite, since the SMBs/SMEs have low marketing budget.

Back in 2007, I have started SEO for an offshore outsourcing graphic design company. Natural and Organic SEO earned the company many leads. And after 2 years, the company size grew from 3 image manipulators to 50. When I left the company, the company already reached their break-even. And all that happened through Search Engine Optimization (SEO), good sales approach, and service quality.

All of a sudden, all the other competing businesses started to realize the potential of Natural & Organic SEO. Now, the SEO is a buzz around the image manipulation outsourcing businesses. And they already started to create new positions in their marketing team.

However, back in 2006 when I wanted to outsource some SEO job to a local SEO company that had been around for quite a long time. I had a talk with one of their managers, who told me that they do the SEO by putting all the meta tags in place. It was a time when meta tags, hidden texts, and tiny tests were not in practice anymore. However, after talking to them, I understood that they are never close to the current trend in SEO. They are basically, web design firm, not any SEO Agency. Currently after 3 years, they understood that link building was the key element in getting you ranked in Google. So, now they started creating links with scrapped/copied texts from all over the web, when Google’s Duplicate Content Filter is the buzz around the global SEO industry. Anyway, there were good companies like Quantum Cloud that understood the trends and I wonder if Mr. Kundu (I forgot the name) is still there or gone back to Australia.

The Bangladeshi companies had very little demand for Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which didn’t create much demand for the industry to grow. However, some eEntrepreneurs grew in Bangladesh who are now growing traffic for their businesses for themselves.

SEO Industry in India was and is very strong as well as costly. This made many US and European businesses to turn to Bangladesh for their Natural & Organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Other Internet Marketing needs. Currently, the SEO Industry is surviving and thriving for the demand of the overseas businesses in the US and Europe. And most of the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) work in the SEO Industry of Bangladesh is done in-house.

Agency-based Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Company is somewhat non-existent in companies that are Bangladeshi owned. However, there are many US-owned Search Marketing Agencies in Bangladesh with in-house SEO experts like Blueliner IT and Superior Internet Solutions. Therefore, Grameen Solutions took the opportunity to become one of the strongest Natural & Organic SEO Agencies in Bangladesh. I hope by 2011, we will see more Bangladeshi SEO Agency coming up to enrich the SEO Industry in Bangladesh.

Author Profile

Asif Anwar is Search Engine Optimization and Marketing (SEO & SEM) specialist working in the Bangladeshi SEO industry since 2003. Currently working as Associate Manager of Web Marketing Solutions in Grameen Solutions.