How Linkdex developed the best-in-class SEO platform in partnership with our clients and users

Three months after the roll­out of the new ver­sion of the Linkdex plat­form, results to a recent cus­tomer sur­vey show that plat­form engage­ment, fea­ture usage, and over­all user expe­ri­ence are now high­er than ever.

Pat Hong By Pat Hong from Linkdex. Join the discussion » 8 comments

Reaching a customer-centric milestone.

At the begin­ning of this year we unveiled the brand new Linkdex plat­form. With an all new report­ing suite, more in-depth and pow­er­ful data, and a com­plete­ly revamped, mod­ern user inter­face, the changes have meant a much improved, more pow­er­ful and opti­mised expe­ri­ence for our users.

The new plat­form is both the result of the dri­ve and vision that we’ve been nur­tur­ing in the busi­ness for years — and tru­ly, the mar­ket-lead­ing SEO plat­form we’ve always known it could be. We know this, because we com­mis­sioned cus­tomer sur­veys both before and after the launch of the new plat­form, and the results have shown that for our cus­tomers, on key met­rics such as plat­form engage­ment, account man­age­ment, ser­vice, and brand advo­ca­cy, we’re not only reach­ing new mile­stones, but out­per­form­ing our com­peti­tors often by sig­nif­i­cant mar­gins.

We achieved this by being much more cus­tomer-cen­tric, work­ing with our clients and users to define how and where we should improve the Linkdex plat­form and expe­ri­ence. In the SEO space, we’re con­tin­u­al­ly on a mis­sion is to be the plat­form of choice for all SEO pro­fes­sion­als, and meet­ing the needs and require­ments of our clients and users means not just play­ing catchup, but work­ing in part­ner­ship with our clients and users.

It’s already made an impact from a busi­ness per­spec­tive. Our 2016 Q1 results have shown that since the launch of the new plat­form, we seen record sales, record­ed more demos, tri­als, and onboard­ed and trained more users across than ever before.

Listening to our customers.

Ver­sion two” (as we’ve known it unof­fi­cial­ly with­in the com­pa­ny) has not just a prod­uct of our inter­nal busi­ness machine. The new plat­form was devel­oped in col­lab­o­ra­tion with our clients and users. Over sev­er­al months, we’ve intro­duced focus groups, orga­nized beta test­ing, and con­duct­ed sur­veys in part­ner­ship with Brand­Hook to take on feed­back of our users expe­ri­ences of the plat­form. We did this, with the inten­tion that the way we devel­op our prod­uct should revolve around a much more cus­tomer-cen­tric approach where­in our users, espe­cial­ly those that use Linkdex for their day-to-day, have a mean­ing­ful say as to which areas are pri­ori­tised and improved in the next iter­a­tion of the prod­uct.

As out­lined on the BrankHook blog, the sur­vey sought to access:

  • How do you view Linkdex today and where should Linkdex be in the future?
  • What do you know about your cur­rent cus­tomer and what do you need to know?
  • What are the inter­nal bar­ri­ers that Linkdex needs to over­come and what exter­nal forces does Linkdex need to recog­nise?
  • What point of dif­fer­ence does Linkdex have in the com­pet­i­tive mar­ket and why is that impor­tant to cus­tomers?

Our new plat­form has, essen­tial­ly, been built for and with our clients. Devel­op­ing this process has been a sig­nif­i­cant step in the Linkdex jour­ney, and no easy feat — but the results, as we will come to explain, have been excep­tion­al.

To gauge the recep­tion of the new and improved plat­form, we con­duct­ed a sec­ond sur­vey with Brand­Hook in 2016. What we found was that on a num­ber of key met­rics and use cas­es, engage­ment and user sen­ti­ment have improved right across the board. In notable areas, such as fea­ture usage for tasks or tag analy­sis, the lev­el of engage­ment has increased sig­nif­i­cant­ly, and this is a tes­ta­ment of a much improved and more com­plete user expe­ri­ence.

In fact, the areas of improve­ment — accord­ing to our sam­ple of sur­vey respon­dents, who ranged from cur­rent clients to users of com­peti­tor SEO prod­ucts — were both numer­ous and broad, and this is as much an achieve­ment of our clients and part­ners as it is ours.

On that token, here are some of the high­lights of the 2016 Brand­Hook sur­vey, which in effect is also a record of the vast changes and improve­ments that have tak­en effect in the plat­form, and the com­pa­ny, in recent months.

1) Net Promoter Score remains positive, and significantly better than competitor SEO solutions on metrics measuring satisfaction, advocacy, and sentiment.

Linkdex have main­tained a pos­i­tive Net Pro­mot­er Score, which is met­ric mea­sured as a dif­fer­ence between Pro­mot­ers and detrac­tors. As BrankHook state on their blog: “a pos­i­tive NPS is not only a phe­nom­e­nal accom­plish­ment ([…] Bank of Amer­i­ca is ‑24 in the US and Net­flix in the UK rat­ed +13) but an oppor­tu­ni­ty to har­ness the advo­cates.”

Espe­cial­ly amongst fre­quent users, name­ly those who have either used Linkdex for more than a year, or those who use Linkdex at least once a week, the pro­por­tion of advo­cates is at +12 per­cent­age points.

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Retain­ing a pos­i­tive NPS score across a peri­od rep­re­sent­ing the bet­ter part of a year, sin­gles out Linkdex amongst com­peti­tor SEO solu­tions who return neg­a­tive NPS, hav­ing both a low­er per­cent­age of pro­mot­ers and a high­er per­cent­age of detrac­tors.

The over­all take­aways from Linkdex’s 2016 NPS should high­light a reduc­tion in the per­cent­age of detrac­tors, and a resul­tant increase in the pro­por­tion of users who are either sat­is­fied over­all with the plat­form, or like­ly to pro­mote or act as advo­cates for the brand.

As a final pos­i­tive note, the amount of users who stat­ed that they would be using Linkdex more in the next 12 months increased from 41 to 58 per­cent (a met­ric accom­pa­nied with a resul­tant decrease in the same met­ric for com­peti­tor SEO plat­forms), indi­cat­ing a very pos­i­tive future for the com­pa­ny.

2) Engagement across the board, and regularity of use around the the platform, has markedly increased.

One of the most pos­i­tive find­ings we dis­cov­ered in the post new-ver­sion sur­vey results was a marked increase in engage­ment and reg­u­lar­i­ty of use around the plat­form. The num­ber of users stat­ing that they use Linkdex every­day increased from 28 to 32 per­cent in the Wave 2 results, but greater still was the increase in the num­ber of users stat­ing they use Linkdex sev­er­al times a week, which increased from 26 to 39 per­cent.

In fact, usage for each and every fea­ture of the Linkdex plat­form expe­ri­ence pos­i­tive uplift, includ­ing major fea­tures such as Rank Track­ing (up from 91 to 98 per­cent), and Vis­i­bil­i­ty (up from 87 to 97 per­cent). In par­tic­u­lar, usage for less­er used fea­tures is now sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er, espe­cial­ly in the case of Tasks (up from 43 to 68 per­cent) and Tag / Group Analy­sis (up from 64 to 87 per­cent).

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These find­ings are like­ly a tes­ta­ment to a much improved, inter­linked and user friend­ly user expe­ri­ence, where­in users are dis­cov­er­ing and mak­ing greater use of the full scope of our plat­form.

3) Exceptional account management and support

It’s worth not­ing at this point that Linkdex has nev­er been sin­gu­lar­ly a soft­ware plat­form. Inte­gral to our USP has been an account man­age­ment team that sup­ports and enables our clients to expe­ri­ence and get the most out of the full breadth of the plat­for­m’s fea­tures.

Accord­ing to the Brand­Hook sur­vey results, Linkdex’s account man­age­ment team con­sis­tent­ly per­formed above indus­try expec­ta­tions, and notably so above that of our com­peti­tors.

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In fact Linkdex main­tain the high­est score for account man­age­ment in com­par­i­son to equiv­a­lent scores for our com­peti­tors, with the Brand­Hook sur­vey results show­ing we con­tin­ue to pro­vide the best account man­age­ment ser­vice in the indus­try.

Future Growth and Development

The over­whelm­ing take­aways from the roll­out of the new plat­form, and the Brand­Hook sur­vey results con­firm the suc­cess­es we’ve had work­ing with clients and part­ners in devel­op­ing Linkdex to be the best-in-class SEO plat­form, sup­port­ed by the best-in-class account man­age­ment team and ser­vice.

It’s already made an impact from a busi­ness per­spec­tive. Our 2016 Q1 results have shown that since the launch of the new plat­form, we seen record sales, record­ed more demos and tri­als, and onboard­ed and trained more users across than ever before.

And this is just begin­ning. Ahead of us, we have the most excit­ing devel­op­ment roadmap in Linkdex his­to­ry, with the new plat­form ensur­ing we can roll­out these new fea­tures in record time.

For our part, Linkdex will con­tin­ue to strive to pro­vide an excep­tion­al user expe­ri­ence, increas­ing­ly built and devel­oped for, and in part­ner­ship with our clients and users.

Find out how you can ben­e­fit from Linkdex’s new fea­tures by request­ing a demon­stra­tion below.

Pat Hong

Written by Pat Hong

Editor at Linkdex/Inked, Linkdex

Pat covers the SEO industry, digital marketing trends, and anything and everything around Linkdex. He also authors Linkdex's data analysis and reports, analysing the state of search in various industries.

Inked is published by Linkdex, the SEO platform of choice for professional marketers.

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