Are there India-specific SEO things I should be doing differently, language, COD, local search?
The short answer
A meaningful chunk of Indian search traffic is Hinglish or vernacular-transliterated ('cash on delivery kurta near me', 'best face wash oily skin ladki'), so don't optimise only for the clean English keyword your global tool suggests. COD/pay-on-delivery intent, PIN-code-level delivery and availability content, and mobile-first speed for shoppers on mid-range Android over patchy 4G matter more here than in the US/EU playbooks you'll read online. Agencies that work exclusively with Indian D2C brands understand this nuance far better than a generic global guide ever will, use them as a sense check, not gospel.
A quick summary to orient you. The real value is below: the resources worth your time, from people who've actually done it, not us.
Here are the resources
Hand-picked from around the web, each with a note on why it earns your time. India-specific ones carry a badge.
4 resources4 India-specific4 link-checked
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Why we picked it
Digi Acai is one of the few Indian agencies that works exclusively with D2C brands on SEO, so this reflects what actually works for Shopify stores selling in India rather than a generic global playbook.
Why we picked it
Shopify's India-localised version of their SEO guide, framed for small businesses rather than enterprise sites, a good sanity check that you're not over-engineering SEO before you have traffic to lose.
Why we picked it
An India-agency playbook that pulls technical, content and link-building advice specifically for Indian D2C brands into one place, including current Indian retainer pricing context to sanity-check what you should pay for SEO help.
Why we picked it
Social Beat is one of India's larger performance-and-SEO agencies, and this case study shows their actual before/after process for growing organic revenue on an Indian D2C brand, a useful sanity check on what an agency engagement should look like.
