We’re three months in to only the sec­ond ver­sion of Linkdex – the first plat­form saw us through our first five years – and it’s inspired me to write my inau­gur­al blog as CEO of Linkdex. Most­ly to give a view of how we think and where we’re going – with some oft-repeat­ed views thrown in for good mea­sure.

For all my brash­ness, I’m not one to hog the dig­i­tal lime­light. We have oth­ers here who are far more qual­i­fied, far more high­ly spo­ken of in the SEO indus­try. My job, pret­ty much since I’ve been here, is to keep the cus­tomer hap­py, with­out mak­ing a fuss and with­out the need for the mar­ket­ing spot­light to be shone my way.

For me, the def­i­n­i­tion of “cus­tomer” changes depend­ing on the sit­u­a­tion. There are those who buy Linkdex, of course, and those who use it. But there are oth­ers, too: the peo­ple who work here, dri­ving the busi­ness for­ward so suc­cess­ful­ly; those that sup­ply Linkdex, help­ing us make the plat­form just what it is; those that put up the mon­ey for the com­pa­ny in the first place (share­hold­ers by any oth­er name) and a myr­i­ad of oth­ers, peo­ple whose cus­tom and input would help any busi­ness thrive, let alone Linkdex. Some­times that means fac­ing up to mis­takes we’ve made, oth­er times tak­ing tough deci­sions to move the busi­ness for­ward.

Some­times it just means I’m the first in the pub and the last out of it, and it always seems to be my round.

Bal­anc­ing a busi­ness like Linkdex – SaaS plat­form as it is, expec­ta­tions of hock­ey-stick growth, demands for con­stant improve­ment, respond­ing to out­landish com­peti­tor claims and coun­ter­ing rumour with truth – would be a full time job if we let it be. It’s real­ly impor­tant that we don’t though – that we instead look to stand for some­thing, rather than los­ing our­selves in spread­sheets of the future, or find­ing our­selves reach­ing for the same clichés to describe our­selves; becom­ing just anoth­er gener­ic prod­uct on the mar­ket.

I’m against cer­tain hack­neyed phras­es (per­haps infa­mous­ly, if only due to the pro­fan­i­ty-laden response) – “cus­tomer cen­tric mar­ket­ing” is one of them (isn’t mar­ket­ing cus­tomer-cen­tric by it’s entire nature?) – and I’m a bit too long in the tooth to be entire­ly enam­oured with the bull­shit gen­er­al­i­sa­tions allowed for when folk talk about “dis­rup­tion”.

Not every­thing needs to be dis­rupt­ed: for exam­ple, Linkdex has an unwrit­ten rule (though about to be writ­ten via this very post) about how we deal with adver­tis­ing agen­cies that are cus­tomers of Linkdex: we don’t approach their clients under any cir­cum­stance. They’re the cus­tomers of our clients, allowed to exist in total har­mo­ny with the sup­pli­ers of our client (ie, us) with­out being resold on a plat­form they already use (direct­ly or indi­rect­ly).

See, I don’t believe the Agency mod­el is about to be “dis­rupt­ed”; I do believe it will evolve and adapt, but ulti­mate­ly they don’t need one of their sup­pli­ers sud­den­ly decid­ing that they can offer a bet­ter ser­vice and bit­ing the very hand that feeds them (while under the false secu­ri­ty of a long term con­tract), all in the name of “dis­rup­tion” itself. It’s not dis­rup­tive. It’s just bloody stu­pid.

That con­cept of dis­rup­tion did come to mind, though, over the last few months. As we secured our last round of fund­ing, ensur­ing we were cap­i­talised to grow rev­enue and prof­it, we start­ed to real­ly think about what we expect­ed to become, what our cus­tomers real­ly want­ed us to achieve, to sup­port them with.

We’ve grown by 1000’s of per­cent­age points in rev­enue and clients since 2012 (as I can nei­ther take cred­it nor blame for any­thing Linkdex-relat­ed pri­or to 2012, I treat it, with great humour, as Anno Domi­ni; I once did that joke in a new starter pre­sen­ta­tion and Kirsty Hulse gave me the strangest look, as only Kirsty can, and asked me: “so you think you’re the mes­si­ah?”. I still don’t have a good answer and have rarely used the same joke since), but it’s the feed­back and the joy of our cus­tomers – and the users, those that actu­al­ly use Linkdex to suc­ceed in Organ­ic Search – that real­ly mat­ters. Build­ing a sales machine to flog your prod­uct is one thing, but build­ing a plat­form that actu­al­ly deliv­ers on the mar­ket­ing mes­sages we relay is going to ensure that the sales side is far more straight­for­ward.

In the past, Linkdex has poten­tial­ly dis­rupt­ed itself; look­ing for ways to deliv­er to the minor­i­ty of cus­tomers a greater, sin­gu­lar expe­ri­ence, as opposed to look­ing more to the plat­form to deliv­er the finest, mass expe­ri­ence. That changed some time ago, but those changes are only now com­ing through – we’ve delib­er­ate­ly said good­bye to some tal­ent­ed peo­ple as we cease sup­port of dis­con­tin­ued ser­vices, while build­ing out the real focus of the busi­ness, ensur­ing that we can gen­uine­ly offer that “peak” expe­ri­ence through the scal­a­bil­i­ty of the plat­form.

Since the launch of our new plat­form in Jan­u­ary, we’ve been deliv­ered bou­quets over brick­bats. The lat­est research we under­took through an inde­pen­dent con­sul­tan­cy, Brand­hook, showed our rec­om­men­da­tion lev­els are through the roof. But the hard work doesn’t stop there.

A hap­pi­er cus­tomer becomes a more demand­ing cus­tomer and it’s for us to step up and con­tin­ue to meet the high demands of our many thou­sands of users. I don’t want to dis­tract myself by only look­ing at the var­i­ous growth pro­jec­tions of busi­ness; we’re final­ly in that place where we can deliv­er a knock-out blow, we have both the plat­form and an enor­mous tal­ent pool (both by qual­i­ty and quan­ti­ty) to ensure that we do the one thing we have com­mit­ted to doing: keep­ing the cus­tomer sat­is­fied (I was try­ing to avoid using a 1960s song title to show my age, but the more I wrote, the less like­ly that became).

To under­stand what you want to be, you almost have to be clear on what you’re not. That’s meant changes at Linkdex, a focus away from offer­ing labo­ri­ous ser­vic­ing (with a nod to the qual­i­ty of that ser­vice, but it ulti­mate­ly didn’t scale into thou­sands of hap­py cus­tomers); and strict avoid­ance of con­sul­tan­cy (one thing I think peo­ple find hard to avoid, but ulti­mate­ly we’re not a con­sul­tan­cy and show­ing peo­ple how to get the best out of our plat­form will allow them to achieve more scal­able suc­cess for them­selves).

We have one of the world’s lead­ing SEO plat­forms – so let’s deliv­er it to the cus­tomer and be pre­pared to lis­ten when that cus­tomer, the peo­ple that REALLY use it every day, have some­thing to say about their expe­ri­ence. For only then can we real­ly improve.

Behind the tech­nol­o­gy, we’re still human: I still find myself reach­ing for the stick to beat out of us the need to be the smartest per­son in the room or the SEO guru; the need to talk when we should lis­ten, the desire to respond when we hear non­sense, either about us or oth­ers or the indus­try itself. I still find myself doing it, but in a rather strange way: I ver­bal­ly pro­tect our com­pe­ti­tion from the envy and the spite that comes from the mouths of the myopic. I don’t expect that in return, but I’m a huge believ­er that there’s bare­ly a sin­gle indus­try in the world that hasn’t thrived with great com­pe­ti­tion. We’re all judged by the com­pa­ny we keep; by the com­pe­ti­tion that’s reach­ing up for us. I believe that Linkdex is the best choice for most any cus­tomer that’s seri­ous about SEO; that doesn’t mean I’m blind to the fact that oth­ers are try­ing to reach our heights. I’m just con­fi­dent that, as we improve, they won’t catch up. That doesn’t make them bad peo­ple, a shock­ing plat­form, unfit for pur­pose, going bank­rupt, or what­ev­er the lat­est rumour about them is. It just means they’re not as good as us. I can live with that.

Then there’s the indus­try itself: it’s still matur­ing; to me, it’s becom­ing a gen­uine part of the adver­tis­ing mix, earned media as opposed to paid media, but part of that very mix nev­er­the­less. From Agency to In-House teams, it’s slow­ly, steadi­ly being recog­nised for what it is. Some­one, some­where kills off SEO every six months and we all take a lit­tle step back, but then those very same peo­ple, with no ounce of self-aware­ness, start talk­ing about “evo­lu­tion instead of rev­o­lu­tion”, remind­ing them­selves that while peo­ple search on a great big bloody data­base like Google, there will be the need to opti­mise to ensure that the cus­tomer finds what they’re look­ing for. The device became agnos­tic; there was no year of mobile after all. It just steadi­ly came upon us. Now we hap­pi­ly deal with it.

And with this matur­ing indus­try, so we will con­tin­ue to mature Linkdex, our focus trained square­ly on ensur­ing that our plat­form ever-improves, thrilling our cus­tomers, grow­ing our cus­tomer base through rec­om­men­da­tion from those very users that we both deliv­er and lis­ten to.
That’s my job, as much as it’s the job of the entire busi­ness. So if you need me, I’ll be qui­et­ly flit­ting between every cus­tomer that this busi­ness has, new and old, in every which way, to make sure that we’re lis­ten­ing and seek­ing to con­tin­ue to thrill.

And if you hang around long enough, you’ll even­tu­al­ly find me lis­ten­ing in the bar, with the sin­gle guar­an­tee I can real­ly offer you: it’s my round.