Gyutae from WinningTheWeb started an interesting discussion on Sphinn about SEO automation and the potential of SEO software programs like RankSense of helping (or hurting) the SEO community as they slowly begin to go mainstream.

By the way, Gyutae is managing our affiliate contest that is giving away more than $14,000 in prizes. Our goal is to register a good number of quality affiliates and of course, to increase the visibility of the RankSense product. Check it out and see if you want to join the conversation.

This blog is now 16 months old and you’ve probably noticed that I don’t run ads, push products or do any kind of affiliate promotions. Only recently did I timidly begin to promote my SEO software. Why? Well, until recently I didn’t feel like the quality experience I was hoping was there yet. Don’t get me wrong, I am very proud of the ideas, innovations and concepts that RankSense offers and also very proud of my development team–especially now that RankSense is finally at a place where I feel comfortable promoting the product.

I have to admit that in the early stages of the project, we made some critical design decisions (mistakes) that resulted in a very unstable code based and non-optimal user experience. Since then, we’ve made significant progress in removing bugs, speeding up the software and providing more valuable insights. Of course, there is still room for improvement and we are continuously working on identifying and addressing these.

When I first came up with the idea of developing a comprehensive SEO management suite that would simplify the technical aspects of SEO, I honestly had no clue just how much effort, money and time would be involved! It’s been four years since starting and I often wonder if all this time and effort would have taken me farther, had I decided to focus on something else.

So what went wrong… Perhaps I simply broke some of the rules I followed to achieve my initial success. For example, I had always tried a new project by creating something small, testing the response and then making it bigger if I was able to see results. No results, no further effort, time or money. With RankSense things were different. I wanted to pursue a dream and along the way ignored common business sense. This is why it is important to remove emotional considerations from your decision making process!

There is also a part of me that enjoys taking on new challenges. I used to be very proud of this personality trait. With this experience, I have to say I have grown a bit wiser. These days, I tend to think that as long as you accomplish your desired goals, there is no need to take the most difficult and challenging road just to prove a point. For me, those days are long gone!

Despite all this, I actually don’t regret having started the RankSense project. I have learned far too much to look back at my experiences with regret. Plus, I am a firm believer that things do happen for a reason. =)

Well, I needed to get that off my chest … now some positive news.

During the past few months, I have been working hard to sign on new web hosting partners interested in promoting the RankSense software suite. I think that a list of good partners will be instrumental in distributing the software at a much faster pace than I could myself. We are starting to see the results of that effort.

1. Superbhosting just added our software to their customer control panel and online marketing section.

2. 1&1 added information about Ranksense to their affiliate marketing site

3. Hostgator signed the partnership agreement and we are expecting them to start offering the software to their customers very soon

4. We have a couple of more hosting companies testing the software and considering it for promotion.

I honestly think that an SEO suite that focuses on simplicity and improvements from an SEO perspective has the opportunity to help give SEO the credibility that it has been sorely lacking. Regular people want search traffic but are primarily turning to PPC due to the instant gratification and perceived simplicity over SEO.

Our goal with RankSense is to remove the technical barriers and allow people to write content and promote it in ways that can improve their search presence. We do not claim to be the magic tool that will instantly push the site to the top of the rankings. Our belief is that by exploiting obvious “search opportunities” anyone can enjoy increased search traffic. There is no black magic, or rocket science in this approach.

What are your thoughts? Will RankSense help or hurt the SEO community by getting SEO into the hands of thousands of non-experienced website owners?

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This entry was posted on Monday, October 6th, 2008 at 4:19 pm and is filed under affiliate marketing , seo . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.