First, a bit about me, and us. Who are we as a company and how did we get here?
After graduating from business school, I decided to start a marketing agency. I wish I could say this was a quick path, but it was most definitely not. With admittedly little experience, I did what many entrepreneurs do: flail around like a chicken with ADHD, desperate to find something that worked. Along the way, I learned a few things.
My first foray was a full-service digital agency that offered website design, email marketing, SEO, PPC, social media–pretty much everything under the digital marketing sun. I learned that by trying to do all things, I wasn’t particularly good at any of them and it frustrated me.
So I decided to focus on one thing. I started a content marketing agency but soon learned that it was incredibly hard to write content when I hadn’t worked in the industry for years.
In my three years of starts and stops and working with dozens of clients, I noticed a few patterns. One was a common understanding that high-quality link building was important, but almost no one knew how to do it effectively. Some clients were able to land a few links here and there through press releases, but not one of them had a repeatable system in place.
The observation led to my research of the murky underbelly of SEO, otherwise known as link building, where I discovered two key challenges:
1. It’s really, really hard to do link building in-house unless you have a team dedicated to only doing so full time. It’s not something you can hand off to an intern.
2. It’s really, really hard to find a trustworthy person to do white hat link building for you. Worse still, using the wrong person can tank your business.
Someone’s gotta do it
I endeavored to get very good at the one thing everyone else wasn’t doing–link building–mainly because they hated it. I took every course under the sun. I tested every method. Skyscraper. Resource linking. Guest posting. Through lots of iteration and more than my fair share of flops, I developed a process that worked, with results that pleased my clients. And to my surprise, these clients didn’t just come and go like others had done in my other marketing agency forays. They stuck around. Their traffic went up. Their revenue grew. They were–happy.
What began as a fledgling company named Bestcoast Marketing has evolved into Linkflow–a boutique agency serving 20 clients in a range of verticals that include software, b2b telecommunications, eCommerce support, online education, and other unique industries.
Our team grew as well. What began as me and a few contractors is now a remote team of 13 that operates like a well-oiled machine.
We learned that to be great at high-quality link building, you need to know where to point backlinks for maximum ROI and impact, so we hired SEO strategists who have worked in-house for some of the world’s leading consumer brands. With that level of experience, we’re able to give our clients more than just links. We deliver tangible results they can take to the bank.
Learning, laughing, and growing
I’m proud of what we’ve built. We have a roster of long-term clients who we love working with and a team that genuinely enjoys one another, even though almost none of us have met in person, since we’re dispersed across the US. We learn every day and have fun while helping our clients make money.
We’ve rebranded as Linkflow because Bestcoast Marketing was a bit clunky, but more importantly, it didn’t speak to our specialty: link building. Not to mention that the 30+-character email addresses were out of control.
So goodbye Bestcoast Marketing, and hello Linkflow.