A group from New Zealand cloud software developer Genesis Interactive claim to have come up with a “possible world first”, a tool called Comet SEO that aims to simplify the search engine optimisation (SEO) process for Kiwi companies.
Created by seven developers and two support staff in “a 12 hour ‘hackathon’ in downtown Auckland” over the weekend, Comet SEO aims to speed up and decrease the cost of the process for businesses by using social media, search engines and user-generated content to drive qualified traffic to a company’s website. And early indications are that it has struck a cord, with 35 new customers signing up for it over the weekend.
“As far as we are aware, nobody else has developed this kind of application and certainly not during a marathon overnight session,” says Genesis Interactive’s chief executive Manas Kumar.
Of course, SEO is a fairly mysterious, misunderstood and often ignored online marketing realm. Yet with six billion people and approximately 8.9 billion web pages to navigate, it’s becoming increasingly important.
“SEO represents this complex, arcane art to most people,” says Kumar. “In fact, it’s really about taking a number of common sense actions which will almost certainly increase a company’s chance of being found online. For example, once a website goes live it can take Google up to 90 days to find and index it. Comet SEO creates a standards compliant site map that helps Google and other search engines index the site in little more than a week.”
In today’s hyper-connected world, it’s no longer just about finding new customers, it is also about being found, he says.
“Previously companies had to rely on expensive consultants or lots of hard work to achieve that. With Comet SEO we’ve simplified search engine optimisation to the point where any website owner, regardless of their technical knowledge and understanding of how search engines work, can implement simple things to get the best out of their search engine rankings.”
And if all this talk of SEO is getting you a bit hot under the collar, be sure to check out the SEO challenge.
