About
Hi, I'm Hrithika Sudharsan.
I'm the person behind ByHrithika — a BBA graduate building a practical digital marketing skill set at the exact moment search itself is splitting into three: Google, answer engines, and generative AI. This page is my attempt at an honest account of where I actually am in that process.
Background
I graduated with a BBA, which gave me a grounding in business strategy, communication and how organisations actually make decisions — useful context for marketing, even though it isn't a marketing degree on its own.
From there, digital marketing became the specific direction I wanted to specialise in. I'm currently developing practical expertise through structured digital marketing training combined with project-based work, rather than claiming finished expertise I haven't earned yet.
How I think about the field
Search is not one thing anymore. A person might Google something, read an AI Overview instead of clicking a link, or ask ChatGPT the same question a week later. I'm interested in all three layers — SEO, AEO and GEO — because treating them as separate jobs misses how people actually search today.
I use AI tools throughout my own workflow — for research, ideation and drafting — but I treat AI as an assistant to my judgement, not a replacement for it. Anything published under ByHrithika has had a person (me) decide it's accurate and worth publishing.
Where I'm focused right now
These are active areas of study and practice, not finished specialisms.
Search fundamentals
SEO, keyword research, on-page structure and technical basics.
Emerging search
AEO and GEO — writing for answer engines and generative AI.
Content & brand
Content marketing, social media marketing and personal branding.
How I approach a project
- Understand the business first. What the business actually does, who it serves, and what "more visibility" would need to mean in practice.
- Audit before advising. Look at the current site, content and search presence before recommending changes.
- Plan across SEO, AEO and GEO together. Decide what needs traditional optimisation versus answer-first restructuring.
- Use AI as a tool, not a shortcut. AI speeds up research and drafting; I still review, fact-check and edit before anything goes live.
- Document what changed and why. So the reasoning behind a decision is traceable later, not just the output.
Personal branding philosophy
I think a personal brand should be a more honest, more legible version of the person behind it — not a persona. ByHrithika is deliberately built around my actual name and actual stage of learning, because I'd rather be trusted for being accurate than impressive for being vague.
Practical projects
Alongside training, I work on hands-on projects — auditing sites, mapping keywords, drafting AEO-structured content and testing how content performs across search and AI tools. Each one is labelled by type on the portfolio page: personal project, academic/practice exercise, or client-adjacent work.
A note on transparency: This site does not list years of professional experience, past clients, certifications, awards or testimonials, because none currently exist to list. What you see here — the training, the focus areas and the projects — reflects where things actually stand.