Defense against the dark arts: Why Rand Fishkin has stuck with radical transparency
Rand Fishkin remembers the early days of search engine optimization, but not always fondly.
In the early aughts, SEO had a bad rap. The whole practice was slandered as below-board. It consisted of scuzzy and mysterious tactics for gaming Google. It was portrayed, essentially, as a dark art. And the attitude on SEO forums wasn’t helping.
“There was an almost mafia-like subculture in the industry,” Rand says. “Don’t snitch. Don’t tell. We don’t talk about the tactics we’ve learned that work. That world was repulsive to me.”
So in 2004, Rand tried to change the conversation. He started a blog, SEOMoz, whose purpose was to be transparent about what works and share best practices with no shame. He wanted to shine some light on SEO.
Transparency, in the context of tech, can mean a couple of different things — from specialized knowledge to internal practices — but its popularity is widespread among company mission statements. Doubly so when it’s radical.
For a long time, transparency for Rand simply meant sharing SEO tips, but as his influence has grown, so has his hand. A lot about Rand and his website has changed. His blog evolved into Moz, the marketing SaaS company. In the process, he went from blogger to founder and CEO, before later stepping down to an individual contributor.
And yet even as his knowledge has grown into a competitive business, his commitment to transparency remains the same.
“A lot of companies will share massive user growth,” Rand says. “Very few companies share bad news, right? Relatively few people believe in sharing your numbers even when they’re poor.”
Rand namechecks Buffer as one of the companies truly living up to radical transparency. Last month, Buffer’s CEO Joel Gascoigne announced that his company had made 10 layoffs, and then led the internet through his rationale for having to done so:
In short, this was all caused by the fact that we grew the team too big, too fast. We thought we were being mindful about balancing the pace of our hiring with our revenue growth. We weren’t.
The layoffs will allow Buffer to continue to recover, but nobody feels awesome about it. Nevertheless, Joel was willing to broadcast his company’s misstep so that other startups in similar positions might wise up. This happens to a lot of startups, whether they talk about it or not.
“There’s nothing requiring them to say that, but it was still very brave and bold of them,” Rand says. “It was clearly a core values-level commitment to transparency. Moz is similar. We published our numbers even when our growth flattened out. Even when we had bad years.”
It’s not just the bad news that can backfire. When Moz first started building SEO and link research software, there weren’t many competitors in the field. The prejudice against SEO had carried over from the early aughts, and entrepreneurs weren’t sure it was worthwhile. But then Moz started publishing its numbers: 100% growth, year-over-year.
“I have talked to CEOs and founders of companies in our sphere who make SEO software and who basically said, ‘We saw your numbers in 2008 and 2009 and 2010 and we thought, dude, we have got to get into the SEO software field.’ A lot of folks ask me, ‘Aren’t you creating competition for yourself?’ The answer is absolutely yes.”
So, what’s the upshot?
“Transparency is fundamental to my values and Moz’s culture,” Rand says. “It’s the right thing to do.”
Still, many entrepreneurs might find that rationale kind of squishy. Even so, Rand believes there to be tactical advantages, too. For one thing, transparency doesn’t allow Moz’s products to stagnate. It proactively creates competition, which forces the company to innovate.
Transparency has also given Moz a closeness to its customers. When in the past Moz veered from its transparent values, the results have been bad — not just in guilt, but in actual numbers.
“2007 to 2012 , there’s 100% growth year over year, 5 years in a row,” Rand says. “By every metric you can see Moz is very transparent and very close to customers. 2013 that disconnects a little. Growth goes to around 60%. We released a big product that replaced things and it was very disconnected in its build process from our customers.”
And this is probably why so many tech companies have glommed onto the principle of radical transparency. They want to create a dialogue. If you’re constantly releasing new features and updating your product, you want a feedback loop. Still, for many , transparency seems to be lip service. They want their users to talk to them. In exchange, they’ll smile dumbly, revealing nothing.
But Rand’s seen the delta between secrecy and transparency. The years when he opened up to his customers were sometimes humbling, but they were never bleak. They level-set the product.
“Short-term, it feels frustrating and hard,” he says. “Long-term, it won’t just be good for us, it will also be good for the industry. It makes us work harder. It forces us to build better things.”
Ultimately, radical transparency means being honest with yourself.
Want to learn about how Moz builds better things? Read The Signal’s article about Rand’s Data-Driven Disney World.
