Pure SEO’s nationwide search for industry leaders

New Zealand’s largest search engine optimisation firm, Pure SEO, is addressing an industry skills shortage even as it expands into new local and global markets. The award-winning six-year-old company, recently named a finalist in the 2015 Excellence in Business Support Awards run by AUT’s Faculty of Business and Law, is launching PureBiz, an intensive six-month programme that will identify future SEO stars and offer them the opportunity for independent business ownership.

Pure SEO was itself founded on principles of entrepreneurship and calculated risk, and founder and managing director Richard Conway, who established the company with $200 after emigrating from the UK in 2009, says the intention is to foster budding tech entrepreneurs and create long-term employment. The programme is a global first, and Conway says it is a prospect for markets such as Australia and the UK, where Pure SEO has a number of clients.

Conway says PureBiz is likely to produce two or three high-calibre graduates. He expects the graduates to be prepared to establish their own Pure SEO office in conjunction with Pure SEO.

Applicants for the programme will take part in an independently judged entrepreneurship challenge, after which a shortlist of three candidates for PureBiz will be identified. “They don’t have to be new graduates fresh from other institutions,” Conway says, “and in fact, a certain amount of prior life experience would be beneficial for an intensive programme of this nature. There is a lot of talent out there, and we would expect strong applicants to come from the existing tech workforce and potentially other sectors.”

PureBiz candidates will each cycle through two-month phases of learning about business, sales, operations and digital marketing products, while being paid for doing so. Those not ready for business ownership may ultimately join Pure SEO’s 28-strong team at its head office in Auckland or elsewhere in New Zealand or internationally. 

Anyone wanting to find out more about PureBiz can contact Connie Miller at Pure SEO: [email protected]