Who is Sanjay Shenoy?

I am the founder of Tractionn, an education and training company where I run my flagship training program called the SEO Career Kickstarter (SCK) program (previously known as HIIT SEO).

I started this program in March 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic and so far more than 1000 people have finished the program successfully and landed high paying SEO jobs.

But why did I start it?

Because SEO changed my life. And I truly believe that it can change yours too.

This is why I am on a mission to help 100,000 people kickstart a fulfilling and successful SEO career.

SEO gave me a fulfilling career, a livelihood and very importantly, an identity.

Here’s how:

I started way back in 2009 when I was just 19 years old.

Actually, my journey started in Bangalore when I was 17.

I had taken up science in my 12th, on my way to becoming an engineer, like almost everyone in this country. I hated it – absolutely detested it.

That’s when I decided to do something on my own.

One of my college friends told me about how he was trying to make some money on the internet. Being a broke college student, I was very interested to know if I could do the same so I set off to tame the internet.

I did not even have a computer and an internet connection, but I didn’t let that stop me. I spent almost all of whatever little pocket money I used to get on internet cafes, and the rest was for my food.

After 2 years of frequenting internet cafes every day, I came across the term SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).

I saw it on freelancing platforms and there were a lot of projects paying top dollar for SEO services.

Without even knowing what SEO was, I started bidding on these projects.

Obviously, I did not win a single project and quickly realised I was doing it all wrong.

That’s when I had an idea:

“What if I post a project looking for SEO services to see what kind of proposals these professionals are sending and imitate them?”

And that’s exactly what I did.

As soon as I posted the project, I started receiving proposals from many top-notch SEO freelancers and agencies.

I went through all the proposals, took the best parts from each of them, and made a fantastic proposal of my own.

Once I was confident that I have a great proposal, I then went and looked for some SEO projects and started bidding on them.

Believe it or not, I won the first project that I bid on!

Honestly, I had no idea what I was doing, what I had promised, and how to deliver what I had promised. But I slogged it out and delivered the project successfully and made my first ever $400 on the internet!

After 2 whole years of continuously failing, I had finally succeeded.

Realising the potential for growth in this industry, I set up an agency that was operational in Bangalore and Singapore. I ran this for about 4 years before better sense prevailed.

I quickly realised not only do I have a lot to learn about SEO, but also about running a business.

So, I started hunting for startups to work for and chanced upon a startup called Thrillophilia. This is where I truly experienced the power of SEO and content at scale.

When I joined, they were getting about 500K visitors and by the time I left the company, we were hitting 1.3 million visitors per month!

It was a spectacle to watch.

But I was not convinced.

I wanted to be sure whether what I learned and experienced in Thrillophilia is repeatable because if it’s not, it would mean I just got lucky.

That’s when I joined Explara, an event ticketing, and registration platform.

Here, my team and I set implemented SEO to get 1,00,000 visitors per month in just 6 months!

In fact, we managed to get one of the blogs so viral that it got us over 5,00,000 visitors in less than a week and almost crashed our servers! (My COO was extremely pissed off with me).

That’s when I knew I had a framework to implement both the art and science of SEO.

I went on to help brands like Mercedes Benz India, Nikon Lenswear, Yourstory, Scripbox, HDFC, and many more companies to harness the power of SEO.

I am also lucky to be a part of the Digital Master’s Alliance, a group of 9 digital marketers from around the country. Together, we conduct the Digital Masters Conference, where we speak and share our knowledge with business owners and help them go digital.

Personally, I am also a bit of an adventure junkie.

I have trekked the Himalayas for a week, rode for 1700 km across the north-eastern states of India on a motorcycle, played with baby crocodiles and snakes in Sri Lanka, almost drowned but had a great time at a surf camp in Bali.

I also managed to explore the northern villages through the tropical jungles of Bali on a motocross bike, trekked an active volcano, danced through the night at the full-moon party in Thailand, jumped off a 50 feet high waterfall and went shark diving in the Philippines, went solo backpacking across Europe and some south east-Asian countries.

While I am not doing all of this, I am training in Muay Thai, watching Formula 1, listening to great music, and giving belly rubs to my dog, Max.

Look, I am not telling you all this to show off my achievements.

I am telling you so that you know I am qualified to teach you SEO and help build a successful career.

As mentioned before, SEO changed my life and I believe I can help you change yours.

I hope my story has served as proof for that.

P.S Since you have it made it this far, might as well give me a follow on your favourite social media. You can find me here: