RelationshipOps of the Week #12.

Sam Wright.

We’re excited to feature Sam Wright this week, the Managing Director at Blink SEO and Macalytics.

Because, in a space where most Shopify agencies chase broad rankings or surface-level wins, Sam’s carved out something different. His work focuses on deep technical SEO for Shopify stores, specifically fixing site structure, product data, and taxonomy. 

It’s the “boring” stuff… but it’s what actually moves the needle.

That clarity has earned Blink a reputation as the team you call when a site looks fine on the surface but growth has stalled. Sam’s not trying to be everything to everyone. He’s built a consultancy around one hard problem, and solving it really well.

And that’s exactly why we invited him to this series.

So, let’s dive into how Sam builds relationships in a low-trust industry, how relationships open doors to high-impact work, and why clarity in your craft makes you easier to recommend.

Not Just “Another SEO Agency”.

Leonard Chin: What’s an instance when a relationship led to a big win or a really great opportunity for your business?

Sam Wright:

“I often say we work in an industry where trust starts below zero. SEO has a horrible reputation - lots of over-promising, lots of jargon, not much commercial accountability. Even though we’ve evolved into something broader for large eCommerce stores (structure, product data, taxonomy, theme work that overlaps with CRO and UX), we’re still broadly perceived as “an SEO agency”, so we don’t usually start with much benefit of the doubt.

That’s why relationships with trusted advisors have been so important for us. Some of our biggest projects have come via people like fractional CFOs and CMOs who go into a business, lift the bonnet, and realise that the existing agency partners aren’t at the level required,or simply aren’t doing the kind of deep structural work that’s needed.

One example: we were introduced to a multi-million-pound ecommerce brand by a fractional CMO we’d known for a while. They’d been brought in to fix flatlining growth. On paper, everything looked “fine” - they had an SEO agency, a paid media agency, and a dev team - but revenue wasn’t moving and everyone was blaming tracking, creative, or “the market”.

The CMO knew enough about our work to recognise a pattern. The brand had thousands of products, a messy taxonomy, thin collection pages, and a theme that made it hard to scale any structural changes. Their agencies were focused on surface-level activity (blogs, more ad campaigns) but no one was doing the unglamorous work of restructuring categories, cleaning product data, or building a proper foundation for discovery.

Because of the trust we already had with the CMO, we got brought in not as “another SEO agency” but as a specialist partner with a very specific job: fix how the site is structured and how products are described so customers (and algorithms) can actually find the right things.

We re-worked their taxonomy, rebuilt key templates, and created systems for tagging and collections that their team could run with. Twelve months later, overall revenue was up around 33%, with organic up around 100%, and a lot of the “paid problems” they were seeing became easier too, because the site was finally organised around how people actually shop.

That project fundamentally came from one relationship - someone who understood what we do, trusted how we work, and was willing to put us in front of their client as part of the solution.”

Useful & Specific.

Leonard Chin: What's your daily/weekly routine for maintaining relationships that help your business?

Sam Wright:

“For us, relationship-building is mostly about two things: staying useful and staying specific. Practically, that looks like:

* Creating and sharing content that speaks to the real problems our partners see in the wild - broken tracking, messy product data, slow dev cycles, chaotic taxonomies on big Shopify stores. When they see “problem X” in a client, we want a little bell in their head to ring: this is a Blink problem, and here’s how they’d solve it. Our email newsletter is a big part of this - it’s not general marketing tips, it’s very specific to the kind of structural issues we fix.

* Making sure we properly understand our partners’ specialisms so the value flows both ways. For example, we have partners who deeply understand subscription models, others who specialise in checkout optimisation, others in theme development, and others in fractional leadership. If we’re working with a brand that’s struggling with subscriptions on a strategic or technical level, I know exactly who to bring in. Same if a dev agency has left them in the lurch, or they’re struggling to hire internally and need a fractional CMO or eCommerce lead.

* Keeping a simple, human cadence. I try to have a light weekly or fortnightly touchpoint rhythm: reply to people’s updates, send a quick Loom if I see something relevant to their world, forward opportunities that obviously fit their lane. It’s less about a rigid CRM routine and more about a habit of asking “who would this be genuinely useful for?” whenever we learn something.

* The key pattern is that this only really works when the specialism is clear on both sides. The relationship becomes valuable when you can confidently say, “If you’re a Shopify brand with a big catalogue and you’re stuck on structure, that’s us,” or “If you’re struggling with subscriptions, that’s them.” Vague generalists are hard to recommend, well-defined specialists are easy.”

Slow to Build, Quick to Lose.

Leonard Chin: What tips would you give to your younger self around relationships and how they impact business?

Sam Wright:

“Honestly, I’d tell my younger self to start much earlier and take it much more seriously. For a long time, we treated relationships as a nice-to-have on top of doing good work. We didn’t invest enough in building a network of operators who understood what we do and where we’re a good fit. When we finally did – mostly over the last few years - it became obvious how much we’d left on the table.

A few specific lessons I’d pass back:

* Don’t wait until you “need leads” to build relationships. Start when things are calm, and focus on learning about other people’s businesses, not pitching your own.

* Get very clear on your own specialism so it’s easy for people to remember when to call you. “SEO” is too vague. “We fix structure, product data and taxonomy for large Shopify stores” is something people can actually use.

* Bias towards being helpful without keeping score. Introduce people, share what you’re seeing in the market, point brands towards the right specialist even when it’s not you. The goodwill from that compounds over time in a way that’s hard to track but very real.

Finally, accept that relationships are slow to build and quick to lose. Show up consistently, do what you say you’ll do, and protect the trust you’re given. In a low-trust industry, that becomes an advantage.”

Key Takeaways.

I’m glad Sam Wright brought up the point on building relationships only when you “need leads”... because if that’s what you’re doing, your conversations won’t be as genuine as compared to someone who connects out of curiosity.

To end this off, here are a few key takeaways that I thought would be useful to any professional service leaders looking to hone in their existing relationship operations:

• Trusted partners open real doors. Sam’s biggest win came from a fractional CMO who understood what he did and trusted him enough to bring him into a complex project as the fix-it partner.

• Relationship-building is about being useful and specific. Blink’s content, partner ecosystem, and weekly rhythms are all designed to help others solve the exact problems they’re known for.

• Clarity beats generalism. The more clearly you define your niche, the easier it is for others to remember, refer, and rely on you.

That’s all for now.

If you're open to sharing your experiences in one of our future articles… or know of someone who is, feel free to drop me an email here.

Author.

Leonard Chin
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