Xconomy:

“Hubspot, a Web startup in Cambridge, MA, is all about saving businesses from their own ignorance.

It’s nobody’s fault that the rise of the Web has changed the way people find products and services in urban America and left so many entrepreneurs stuck in the era of direct-mail marketing or the Yellow Pages. But for a reasonable $250 per month, Hubspot will bring them back to the present, or most of the way, anyway. The company’s Web-based software, which is designed for non-technical users, automates many of the headaches involved in “search engine optimization,” or SEO, the soul-draining game of trying to beat out other businesses in searches related to your business’s products and bring customers your way.

For example, Hubspot’s system will help subscribers set up a hosted website that’s configured to draw in traffic by including the keywords most likely to get the site a high ranking at Google, Yahoo, and other search sites. The software can also help users decide which keywords are worth bidding on at Google Adwords and other contextual ad services, and allow them to set up special “landing pages” for visitors who find the site via those keywords. (An accountant’s website, for instance, might have special landing pages about tax time for users who click on AdWords ads targeted to the keyword “taxes.”)

Hubspot launched its site in late 2006 but has been aggressively pursuing customers only for the last couple of months, Volpe says. (The company eats its own dogfood, to use the Web lingo, making heavy use of its own SEO, permission-marketing, and blogging tools.) The company recently overcame the all-important hump of winning its first round of venture funding, though Volpe won’t say how much or from whom.”