I'm Gaurav. I make search a revenue channel.
Gaurav Singh Mehra is an organic marketing and SEO manager with 10+ years of experience, most recently Digital Marketing Lead at Apptunix, leading a 27+ member team across SEO, content and social. It started with a website he built in 2016, and a decade of owning organic growth across media, banking, e‑commerce, agency and AI product engineering.
Sales executive to Digital Marketing Lead
Marketing Executive
The Bhakti SagarSales Executive
ICICI BankGrowth Manager
DM PharmaTeam Lead
DeftsoftDigital Marketing Lead
ApptunixFour moments that built the career
It started with a website, an AdSense account, and a problem I had to solve myself.
Built my own site
Wrote blogs, put AdSense on it. No traffic meant no earnings, so I taught myself SEO on a live site where the numbers didn't lie.
Hired off the blog
The Bhakti Sagar found me through that site and took me on as a freelance writer. It became a marketing role I held alongside my degree.
BSc, then a fast correction
Graduated, joined ICICI Bank in sales, realised within months that marketing was the real strength, and moved back into it.
Leading, not just doing
Joined Apptunix as Digital Marketing Lead, built a 27+ member team, and owned the whole organic engine across global markets.
That site is what got me hired. No course, no certificate, no interview panel. Just the traffic graph.
On getting the first job, at nineteenFive environments, five different constraints
Click through the roles. Each one taught me something the next one needed.
Independent organic growth consultant
I work with a small number of companies at a time as the accountable owner of organic growth: setting strategy, running the roadmap, directing internal teams and external agencies, and reporting to leadership against a commercial number rather than a rankings dashboard.
- Early‑stage founders who needed a first strategy, and established teams with plenty of execution and no direction
- AI search visibility run as a measured channel, not an add‑on
- Also open to the right senior in‑house role, available for interviews now
Digital Marketing Lead · Apptunix
I owned the entire organic growth engine: SEO, content, online reputation management and brand positioning across global markets. I built and led a cross‑functional team of 27+ across SEO, content and social media, and I was accountable for qualified lead volume rather than traffic charts.
Selling AI product engineering means long, multi‑stakeholder buying cycles where the reader is technical and the decision is never impulsive. It's also where my AEO and GEO work began, because AI‑native buyers were the first group to move their research into ChatGPT and Perplexity, and we saw it in the data before most people were talking about it.
- Built and led a 27+ member cross‑functional team from the ground up
- Owned SEO, content, ORM and brand positioning end to end
- Organic lead generation across US, UK and Singapore
- Started AI search visibility work before it had a name
Team Lead · Deftsoft
I joined as an executive and was promoted to Team Lead. I worked across 100+ client projects spanning industries, markets and budgets, which is the fastest way there is to learn what actually generalises in SEO and what was just one site getting lucky.
Agency work teaches things in‑house rarely does: diagnose fast, prioritise ruthlessly under a billable hour, and present to a client who needs the commercial case rather than the audit. The promotion also moved me from doing the work to being accountable for other people's output, which is a genuinely different job.
- 100+ client projects across industries and markets
- Promoted from executive to Team Lead
- Briefing, review and delivery accountability for a team
- Client-facing commercial reporting, not audit dumps
Growth Manager · DM Pharma
My first full‑time marketing role, and the one that made me a generalist. I ran SEO, lead generation, social media, influencer marketing and Facebook ads across multiple e‑commerce sites plus the group's own brand.
Retail is unforgiving in a useful way: margins are thin and every ranking or campaign change shows up in revenue within days. It's the fastest feedback loop I've worked in, and it's where I stopped thinking about channels separately and started thinking about a funnel.
- Organic, paid, social and influencer run across multiple brands
- E‑commerce taxonomy, category and product page optimisation
- Lead generation owned alongside the storefronts
Sales Executive · ICICI Bank
I took this right after graduating because it was a good opportunity at the time. Within a few months it was clear my strength was digital marketing rather than sales, and I'd already been doing marketing practically for three years, so I moved into my actual field early.
Short, but not wasted. I've heard the objections customers raise at the exact moment of decision, which is why I write for intent rather than keyword volume. And financial services is an environment where nothing goes out without compliance sign‑off, so approval chains stopped being something I complain about and became something I plan around.
- Front‑line exposure to real buying objections
- First experience of a regulated approval chain
- An early, deliberate course correction rather than a drift
Marketing Executive · The Bhakti Sagar
Where it actually began. The company found me through the blog I'd built and hired me as a freelance writer, and that turned into a marketing role I held while finishing my BSc.
Publishing runs at a speed most brands never experience: content at volume, editorial SEO, audience growth, and a direct commercial link between traffic and ad revenue. Learning content operations there, at nineteen, is why large content programmes don't intimidate me now.
- Hired on the strength of a self‑built site, with no formal qualification
- High‑volume content operations and editorial SEO
- Held down alongside a full‑time degree
What Gaurav Singh Mehra can own
Fifteen areas I take accountability for at a strategic level, not a list of tactics. The execution underneath each one is assumed.
Organic Growth Strategy
Owning search as a commercial channel: where the opportunity is, what gets built in what order, and what the channel is forecast to return.
AEO, GEO & AI Search Visibility
Getting a brand cited and recommended inside ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, tracked as its own channel with its own reporting.
Go‑To‑Market Strategy
Taking a product or a new market from positioning to pipeline: audience, message, channel mix, launch sequence and the metric it is judged on.
Demand & Lead Generation
Building the machine that produces qualified leads rather than traffic, and knowing the difference between the two in the reporting.
Enterprise & Multi‑Market SEO
Multi‑country, multi‑language and multi‑stakeholder programmes, including migrations on revenue‑critical properties.
Content & Editorial Strategy
Topical authority planned deliberately, with the briefing and QA process that holds quality as output scales.
Paid Media & Performance
Paid search, shopping and paid social run as one funnel with organic, judged on blended CAC rather than channel vanity metrics.
Conversion Rate Optimisation
Diagnosing where intent leaks out of the funnel and fixing it with tested hypotheses, not opinions about button colour.
Brand Positioning & Narrative
Category positioning and messaging that turns a brand into the one people search for by name, which is the most durable organic asset there is.
Online Reputation Management
Owning page one for your brand name: review systems, sentiment monitoring, suppression of inaccurate results and crisis response.
Social Media & Community
Social as a demand and distribution layer feeding search and brand, rather than a posting calendar that reports on impressions.
Digital PR & Authority
Earned coverage and citations through work that deserves them: data studies, expert commentary and publisher relationships.
Analytics, Attribution & Forecasting
Measurement configured to answer commercial questions, with forecasting that leadership can plan a budget against.
Budget & Resource Planning
Allocating spend and headcount across channels, building the business case, and defending it when the quarter gets tight.
Team Leadership & Enablement
Hiring, training and directing marketers, writers and developers, plus managing external agencies and holding them to scope.
What I actually spend my week on
Not a skills chart. This is roughly how a working week splits across the things I own, and it is why "SEO consultant" undersells the job a bit.
The strategy and prioritisation slice is the one that matters most. Knowing which fifteen items on a two‑hundred‑item audit will move revenue this quarter, and having the nerve to ignore the rest, is the whole job.
Three ways that turns into work
Same accountability, different commitment levels.
Embedded, 1 to 3 days a week
I sit inside your team as the accountable owner of organic: strategy, roadmap, directing internal people and external vendors, reporting to leadership. Senior ownership without a permanent headcount.
Defined mandates
Migrations, replatforms, penalty recovery, AI search visibility build‑outs, or a full strategy your own team executes. Fixed scope, clear deliverables, an actual end date.
A senior in‑house role
If organic is core to your business and the volume justifies a dedicated owner, a full‑time hire beats any external arrangement. I'm available for interviews now.
Qualifications & certifications
BSc
Completed alongside the marketing work I was already doing. Working through the degree is why I came out of it with a portfolio rather than just a certificate.
Diploma in Information Technology
The technical grounding that makes the engineering side of SEO readable: how sites are built, why a crawl or rendering problem happens, and how to write a spec a developer will accept.
MBA
Business and management depth behind the marketing: how strategy, budgets, P&L and board reporting actually connect, which is the language senior stakeholders make decisions in.
Google, HubSpot & Semrush
Certified in Search and Analytics, Content and Inbound, and Technical SEO. Useful mainly as a forcing function to stay current as the platforms change under everyone.
Six things true of every engagement
Revenue first, rankings second
We agree the commercial number before any work starts. Rankings are a leading indicator, and I'd rather be measured on the thing your CFO cares about.
Work that actually ships
Specs engineers accept, briefs writers can use, tickets that survive sprint planning. Recommendations dying unshipped is the most common way SEO fails.
I'll tell you when it isn't me
Sometimes the answer is a full‑time hire, a different specialism, or fixing the product first. Saying so costs a project and buys a reputation.
Reporting people can act on
No dashboard handed over without interpretation. Founders and boards get performance explained in language that leads to a decision.
Built for how search works now
Google is one surface. High‑intent research increasingly starts in ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, where there's no blue link to click.
I leave capability behind
Documented process, trained people, systems that keep running. If you eventually don't need me, that was a good engagement.
Things people ask about my background
The ones that come up in interviews and first calls, answered here so you don't have to ask them.
That's the background. What's the problem?
A role you're hiring for, a channel with no owner, or a number that isn't moving. Tell me which, and I'll tell you straight whether I'm the right person and what I'd do first.