Their search turns up success

Slingshot SEO founders Kevin Bailey (top, left) and Aaron Aders talk with Mayor Greg Ballard (right) at a news conference announcing the company's expansion. / Brent Smith / Slingshot SEO photo

When three car-crazy Zionsville High School boys were passing notes in chemistry class a decade ago, they actually were puzzling over some of the on-coming riddles of the Internet.
Fast-forward a few years, and the trio of school friends has created Slingshot SEO, a successful search engine optimization business with 65 employees, 150 clients, $5 million in sales last year and $15 million projected this year.
The company helps its clients' websites to show up high in the results of a keyword search on Google, Yahoo, Bing and other Internet search engines.
For companies, a prime first-page location gives the appearance of being the first choice out of potentially millions of answers to a question or source of information.
Now 29 years old, the three dot-com entrepreneurs were standing Friday with city and state political leaders at company headquarters to announce plans to continue triple-digit growth.
"Not bad for a company built from an after-school hobby," quipped President Kevin Bailey, as Gov. Mitch Daniels and Mayor Greg Ballard chuckled.
The governor and the mayor announced a package of economic development incentives intended to keep Slingshot in Indianapolis and to help the 4-year-old Internet marketing company create up to 114 additional jobs by 2013. The jobs are to pay from $50,000 to $100,000.
The Indiana Economic Development Corp. offered Slingshot up to $1.15 million in state tax credits based on the number of new jobs ultimately created. And through Develop Indy, the city will support property tax abatement if the company meets the growth targets.
The company plans to invest about $685,000 to expand its space at 8900 Keystone Crossing.
"Indianapolis is a hotbed for Internet marketing," Ballard said, referring to at least 70 locally based companies in Internet marketing, search engine optimization and other online or software niches. "We have companies in this industry, including Slingshot, that are experiencing rapid growth and gaining national recognition."
Aaron Aders, chief operations officer and one of the founders, said many of the company's employees are coming from Indiana, Purdue and Ball State universities and Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, which have strong academic programs in information technology, computer sciences, software engineering, marketing or journalism -- skills needed in the new economy.
Aaron Aders, chief operations officer and one of the founders, said many of the company's employees are coming from Indiana, Purdue and Ball State universities and Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, which have strong academic programs in information technology, computer sciences, software engineering, marketing or journalism -- skills needed in the new economy.
Slingshot's clients include sports-apparel retailer Finish Line, computer software developer Interactive Intelligence, Volvo and package shipper FedEx.
But the roots of Slingshot grew in high school science class in 1998 when Bailey, Aders and Jeremy Dearringer, now the chief research officer, were trading notes about their Web pages. Bailey's was about the Dodge Viper, Aders' was about the Ford Mustang and Dearringer's was about his favorite, the Humvee.
They got advertising on their pages and began to roll up a couple of thousand dollars a month in revenue from page views on their sites, which they made appealing to search engines.
They got back together in 2006 to create a site for small Noblesville company, Metro RP, which wanted to be at the top of Google searches for anyone looking for "rapid prototyping."
The goal was to attract a dozen new customers for Metro RP; the result was 300 in 2008.

Bailey said, "When performed properly, search engine optimization can have one of the highest returns on investment of any form of digital marketing."

Call Star reporter Bruce C. Smith at (317) 444-6081.
Source http://www.indystar.com/