New Zealand companies can now do their own search engine optimisation quickly and cheaply through an innovative tool that simplifies the entire process.

Created by seven developers and two support staff in a 12 hour 'hackathon' downtown Auckland over the weekend, Comet SEO uses social media, search engines and user generated content to drive qualified traffic to a company's website.

The company behind the groundbreaking application is New Zealand cloud software developer Genesis Interactive, and early indications are that the company has struck the right cord with 35 new customers already signing up over Saturday and Sunday.

Genesis Interactive's CEO Manas Kumar says Comet SEO was built to simplify search engine optimisation, to enable website owners and online marketers to understand how to maximise online opportunities - and it may be a world first.

"As far as we are aware, nobody else has developed this kind of application and certainly not during a marathon overnight session." Six billion people and approximately 8.9 billion web pages make the prospect of being found online quickly a daunting task for most, but surprisingly says Mr Kumar, it's actually pretty simple.

"SEO represents this complex, arcane art to most people. 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 a website.

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. 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," says Manas.