Clear answers.
No sales fog.

Who is Shashikant Shah?

I am an independent consultant based in Kathmandu, Nepal, working across four connected disciplines: AI workflow automation with n8n and the OpenAI API, full-stack development in the MERN stack and Next.js, technical SEO including GEO and AEO, and paid acquisition on Google and Meta. Four-plus years, forty-plus projects, clients in eight countries. I take small, senior-led engagements: the person who scopes the work is the person who does it, which also means I am the one who has to explain a month that went badly. More on the about page.

Do you guarantee first page rankings?

No, and nobody honestly can. Google's ranking systems are not controlled by any consultant, and Google's own documentation explicitly warns against SEOs who guarantee rankings. What I commit to is a defined scope, reporting from your own Search Console and Analytics accounts, and a straight assessment of what is achievable — including when the answer is that your budget will not get you there.

How much does SEO cost in Nepal?

Published Nepali retainers span a very wide range, and the number matters far less than what it buys. The useful questions are what work is included, who performs it, and how it is reported. Rather than invent a figure on a sales page, I compiled and sourced actual market rates in a breakdown of what digital marketing costs in Nepal, including what each budget level realistically delivers. Treat any quote low enough that the only profitable way to deliver it is automated links or recycled content as exactly that.

How long does SEO take to work in Nepal?

Technical corrections can show measurable change in four to eight weeks, because you are removing an obstacle rather than building authority. Competitive commercial terms usually take four to six months. Local map pack visibility often moves fastest, within two to four weeks, when the cause was a wrong category or an incomplete profile. Anyone promising first-page rankings in thirty days is either targeting terms nobody searches or is not being straight with you.

Is SEO or Google Ads better for a business in Nepal?

They solve different problems, and the honest answer is usually both in a particular order. Ads buy traffic immediately and stop when the spend stops. SEO compounds slowly and keeps producing afterwards. The efficient sequence for most Nepali businesses is to run ads first, learn from the search terms report which keywords actually generate enquiries, then invest SEO effort only in those.

What is GEO and how is it different from SEO?

SEO optimises for a ranked list of links. GEO, or Generative Engine Optimization, optimises for being quoted inside a generated answer from AI Overviews, ChatGPT or Perplexity. The outcome differs: in classic search you win a position and get a click, in a generated answer you win a citation and often no click at all. GEO rewards content that states a clear claim, shows its source, is structured so a single passage can be lifted intact, and exists in raw HTML rather than only after JavaScript renders. I wrote this up properly in GEO versus SEO.

How do I get my business cited by ChatGPT or AI Overviews?

There is no guaranteed citation formula. For Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, make the page crawlable by Googlebot, indexed and eligible to show a snippet, then follow Google's normal people-first SEO guidance. Google says no special AI schema or llms.txt file is required or used for ranking. For ChatGPT Search discovery, allow OAI-SearchBot; GPTBot is the separate training control. Accurate structured data can support documented search features, but it does not directly cause citations.

Primary references Google's AI guide, OpenAI's publisher FAQ, and my GEO and AEO consulting.

Can AI write my SEO content?

It writes competent drafts fast, which is genuinely useful for outlines and first passes. It cannot supply the thing that makes content rank in a competitive category: first-hand experience, specific numbers, and claims unavailable on any other page. Google's guidance targets unhelpful content regardless of how it was made, not AI content specifically. In practice, sites that publish volumes of unedited generated articles accumulate pages that rank for nothing and dilute the ones that could have. Use it as a drafting tool with someone who knows the subject in the loop.

Why is my website not showing up on Google?

In rough order of frequency: a noindex tag left behind from the staging build, a robots.txt rule blocking the pages, content that renders only in JavaScript so the crawler receives a nearly empty document, or canonical tags pointing at a different URL. A fifth possibility is that the site is new and nothing links to it. All are diagnosable in under an hour with URL Inspection and a raw HTML fetch, before anyone needs paying. See technical SEO.

Do meta keywords still affect rankings?

No. Google has ignored the tag since 2009 and Bing treats a stuffed one as a spam signal. It is harmless to leave in a template, it does nothing, and any proposal listing it as a deliverable is selling you work that stopped mattering over fifteen years ago. The same goes for keyword density targets: there is no percentage, and there has not been one for well over a decade.

Does geotagging photos help a Google Business Profile rank?

No. Google strips EXIF metadata on upload, so the coordinates are discarded before anything reads them. It is still sold as a monthly deliverable in Nepal. Photos help a profile through completeness and engagement, not hidden location data. More on local SEO.

Should a Nepali business website be in Nepali or English?

Follow the buyer, not the flag. Most Kathmandu businesses selling locally do best with English primary and Nepali on the pages where the decision happens — services, pricing, contact — because educated urban buyers here search in English far more than people expect. Selling outside the valley, to older audiences, or in legal, health and government categories needs more Nepali. Selling abroad needs English only. Also worth knowing: a large share of Nepali speakers search in Roman transliteration rather than Devanagari, so the form people actually type matters more than the correct script.

How do I choose a digital marketing agency in Kathmandu?

Ask who will actually do the work, not who is in the pitch. Insist every account — Search Console, Analytics, Google Business Profile, ad accounts — is created in your name with the agency added as a user. Require reporting from those accounts rather than a slide deck. Reject any ranking guarantee. Ask what they would do in the first thirty days, and whether they can explain a month that went badly. I wrote the long version as a buyer's guide.

What is n8n and what is it actually useful for?

n8n is an open-source workflow automation tool that connects applications and APIs, and it can be self-hosted, so data does not have to leave infrastructure you control. It is most useful for repetitive coordination between systems: routing and enriching inbound leads, moving form submissions into a CRM and alerting the right person, generating recurring reports, running scheduled checks. Paired with a language model it also handles classification and drafting steps that used to need a person. Value is highest where a task is frequent, rule-based, and currently done by hand. See AI automation.