Nick Redding

Nick Redding

Co-founder of Salience. Former Managing Director of Reddico.

I co-founded Reddico with Luke Redding and was its Managing Director from 2014 to March 2024. We grew to around 40 people, ran without traditional managers and contributed over £140,000 to charitable and eco causes. Now I'm a co-founder of Salience with Carl Hendy and Edd Dawson. We show brands what Google and AI bots actually request from their site.

Talk about an advisory roleRead my story
Portrait of Nick Redding

Advisory and board roles

I'm open to advisory and board roles, especially where a company is growing and wants a steady hand on people, culture, scale or AI search. I chaired Reddico's quarterly board and worked with an external board advisor.

Talk to me

Where I can help

Building a company people want to work for

  • Running without traditional managers, and what coaches do instead
  • Open by default: sharing the numbers with the whole team
  • Why culture isn't table tennis and a fridge full of beer
  • Keeping your values as you scale

Leading as a company grows

  • The role of a Managing Director as a company grows
  • Milestones rather than deadlines, and why fixed budgets can slow growth
  • Celebrating mistakes and learning from them quickly
  • Chairing a quarterly board and working with an external board advisor
  • Leading an agency that grew to about 40 people

AI search and SEO

  • How Google and AI bots use a website, and what server logs show

Now

Salience

A lot of teams can't say what Googlebot or GPTBot did on their site yesterday, or what the site gave back. We read it from server and CDN logs. I lead the engines and the technical practice.

salience.com

Before

Reddico

Ten years as Managing Director of an SEO agency that tried to run a company people wanted to work for. What worked, and what we got wrong.

The story

01 / 06

Retail

819 first page rankings, up from 59

  • 819 vs 59non-branded terms on page one, against a year earlier
  • +1,224%non-branded traffic
  • +23%organic revenue

The challenge

The furniture retailer's site was not ranking in the top 60 for any commercial non-branded term. Its prerendering was failing, so Google was often served no content, and the site had slipped out of the rankings altogether since mid-2019.

What the team did

  • Ran a nine month migration to a new Next.js framework, finished in November 2021
  • Trained the client's content team
  • Provided keyword research and guidance for blog content

The result

The migration let Google see and process the site fully. Non-branded terms on page one rose from 59 to 819, measured in January 2022 against a year earlier.

  • WinnerBest Use of Search B2C SEO (Large), UK Search Awards 2022
  • WinnerMost Effective Use of Organic Search, Drum Awards for Digital Industries

Sources: Reddico case study and UK Search Awards 2022 winners list. Reddico's own figures, not independently audited. Back to the index

02 / 06

Marketplace · Trade Me Jobs

Non-branded traffic up 55%

  • +55%monthly organic non-branded traffic
  • +54%year on year page one rankings
  • +25%non-branded keyword coverage

The challenge

New Zealand's biggest marketplace wanted Trade Me Jobs to rank better against dedicated recruitment sites. Complex technical problems were stopping search engines from reaching parts of the site.

What the team did

  • Audited the site
  • Piloted dynamically created, search friendly pages at scale, launched in mid-July 2023 with 250 pages
  • Analysed server log files for crawl efficiency, which unlocked pages without adding to the crawl problem

The result

Pages were unlocked without adding to the crawl problem, and monthly organic non-branded traffic rose 55%.

The technical issues impeding organic traffic for Trade Me Jobs were complex, but the Reddico team were able to expertly identify and unpick them.

Head of Performance, MarTech and Analytics, Trade Me, quoted in Reddico's case study
  • WinnerBest Use of Search B2C SEO (Large), UK Search Awards 2023

Sources: Reddico case study and UK Search Awards 2023 winners list. Reddico's own figures, not independently audited. Back to the index

03 / 06

Asset management

Organic traffic up 256%

  • +256%organic traffic, May 2017 to May 2020

The challenge

BlackRock wanted more organic traffic worldwide and better visibility for its investment thinking, with one partner accountable for SEO strategy.

What the team did

  • Fixed global visibility for the country home pages, including how Google crawled the site and how the country and language versions related to each other
  • Split the work into quick wins with few internal dependencies, and longer conversations with stakeholders about the larger technical changes
  • Set up proactive monitoring to flag issues from development releases across the country sites

The result

Organic traffic rose 256% from May 2017 to May 2020. The biggest change was getting the business to treat SEO as part of new projects from the start, not a separate channel.

The Reddico team has always been very responsive and goes beyond the typical scope of any project.

Global SEO Lead, BlackRock, quoted in Reddico's case study

Source: Reddico case study for BlackRock. Reddico's own figures, not independently audited. Back to the index

04 / 06

Insurance · Life Insurance

From 48th to 4th on Google for “life insurance”

  • +975%organic traffic over three years
  • +300%organic policy sales over three years
  • 249%return on investment

The challenge

Insurance is a hard market for organic search, with price comparison sites and big paid media budgets competing for the same customers. Direct Line had been stuck in the high 40s for “life insurance” since 2013 and had tried other agencies without success. Reddico was asked to help in 2016.

What the team did

  • Reviewed keyword ranking data back to 2012 against Google updates to form a hypothesis for what was holding the page back
  • Worked with Direct Line's developers on technical problems, including how Google was rendering the page
  • Created a new, clean URL for the product and removed or consolidated thin and irrelevant pages around it
  • Ran a UX review and content audit, then rebuilt the life insurance page to explain a complicated product more clearly

The result

The ranking for “life insurance” rose from 48th in 2013 to an all time high of 4th in 2017. The traffic and policy sales gains are measured over three years.

Also for Direct Line for Business. Reddico's case study reports that for July 2020 the public liability insurance pages saw a 50% year on year rise in traffic, 399% in quotes and 491% in sales, after the ranking for “public liability insurance” rose from 10th to 4th.

Reddico were instrumental in helping Direct Line Life Insurance brands appear on page one of Google, which benefited the business commercially.

Life Insurance Product Manager, Direct Line, quoted in Reddico's case study
  • Runner-upBest Use of Search, Wirehive 100 2017
  • ShortlistedBest Use of Search in finance, European Search Awards 2018

Sources: Reddico case study, Direct Line Life Insurance and Reddico case study, Direct Line for Business. Reddico's own figures, not independently audited. Back to the index

05 / 06

Automotive marketplace · Electric cars

12 times the organic traffic to its electric cars section

  • 12xannual organic traffic to the electric cars section
  • 7.8%share of voice for the top 200 electric car keywords, the third highest
  • 45 to 932non-branded electric car keywords in the top 10

The challenge

Electric vehicles were 14.8% of new car sales and rising, but Auto Trader held only a 1.86% share of voice for the top 200 electric car keywords. It asked Reddico for a content campaign to improve the organic performance of its electric cars section.

What the team did

  • Looked at the top 50 competitors by organic share of voice
  • Created six content assets for the electric cars folder, including a map of charging points across the UK and Ireland and a guide to how far drivers can go on a single charge

The result

That is about 1.2 million extra annual visits (Semrush). The top 10 keyword count grew from 45 in April 2021 to 932 in September 2022.

Working with Reddico on this campaign has been a delight and the results speak for themselves.

Head of SEO and Content Marketing, Auto Trader, quoted in Reddico's case study
  • WinnerOrganic Search, Drum Awards for Digital Industries 2023

Source: Reddico case study. Reddico's own figures, not independently audited. Back to the index

06 / 06

Finance publishing

7.3 times the monthly traffic

  • 7.3xmonthly site traffic
  • 147 to 250page one search terms
  • 26.47 to 12.52average ranking position

The challenge

Finimize publishes five to ten finance articles a day, but most sat behind a paywall and could not be indexed. Traffic had come mainly from paid search and social.

What the team did

  • Ran a full audit
  • Fixed the indexing and site health problems
  • Worked on page speed, then on trust signals and the way topic pages were optimised

The result

Monthly site traffic rose 7.3 times. Page one search terms grew from 147 to 250 and the average ranking position improved from 26.47 to 12.52.

  • ShortlistedBest Use of Search, Finance SEO, European Search Awards 2024

Source: Reddico case study. Reddico's own figures, not independently audited. Back to the index

Results are Reddico's own figures and were not independently audited. Case studies describe work by the whole Reddico team.

Some of the brands the Reddico team worked with

  • Direct Line
  • BlackRock
  • Finimize
  • Auto Trader
  • The Cotswold Company
  • Trade Me

Logos belong to their owners. The work was delivered by the Reddico team. Read the case studies

About

How I got here

Ten years running an agency, then a new company.

Starting Reddico

Luke Redding and I started Reddico in 2012. There was never a set target to reach. We thought we could do things better, and wanted to see if we could make it work.

I became Managing Director in 2014 and led the team for the next ten years.

Growing it

By March 2024 we were a 40 person agency with about £4m in revenue. The growth was recognised along the way. In 2016 Reddico was named Fastest Growing Agency in the Wirehive 100. In 2017 it was 30th in Deloitte's UK Technology Fast 50, with 851% growth, and the fastest growing technology company in the South East, and 138th in Deloitte's Technology Fast 500 EMEA; it was also named Most Respected Agency in the Wirehive 100. In 2019 it was 309th on the Financial Times 1000 list of Europe's fastest growing companies, after 483% revenue growth between 2014 and 2017.

In search, Reddico won Best Small SEO Agency at the European Search Awards in 2020, and Best Large SEO Agency in 2023.

Reddico was listed in Great Place to Work UK's Best Workplaces for small organisations three years running: 9th in 2019, 4th in 2020 and 5th in 2021. In 2020 it also appeared in the Sunday Times top 5. In 2021 it was 2nd in the UK's Best Workplaces in Tech, and was named Best Agency to Work For (under 50 staff) at the Company Culture Awards.

Reddico was certified to ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 in 2020, and renewed ISO 27001 in March 2023, with the British Assessment Bureau.

In November 2021 Reddico joined Sideshow Group. I stayed on as Managing Director until March 2024.

On the board

I was a board member and chair of Reddico's quarterly board, and I appointed and worked with an external board advisor.

Getting culture wrong, then putting it right

In 2017 we thought we had ticked the culture box. We had beers, nights out, bean bags and table tennis. Then our internal NPS survey told us something was wrong. We had four detractors out of twelve.

It was our fault. We had values we didn’t completely embrace & failed to deliver on commitments we’d made.

From a LinkedIn post I wrote in February 2021

We took three months to write a manifesto for how we wanted the company to run. The move to self-management started in March 2018. Over the next few years we removed managers and introduced coaches. We opened up the P&L to the whole team, let people decide when and where they worked, and shared profit every quarter. Unlimited leave came with a minimum of 20 days a year, and a salary panel, voted in by the team, reviewed pay once a year. The question that guided us was simple: what's stopping people from doing their best work?

From 2018 to 2019 Reddico published a 21-part series, Our culture revolution. The company handbook went public in October 2021. In 2020 our quarterly employee NPS scores were 94, 95, 94 and 95.

Reddico was certified as a B Corp in August 2022, with a score of 91.3. Reddico contributed over £140,000 to charitable and eco causes and had planted 150,000 trees by March 2024, as part of a pledge to plant a million by 2030. We ran retreats in Lisbon, Oslo, Austria, Barcelona and Brussels, and the team ended up fully remote.

We didn't always get things right, and I didn't always get things right. We stayed true to ourselves, put people first and stuck to our values. I'm proud of that.

Stepping back

I stepped back in March 2024. It felt like the right time, for me and for someone else to take the company forward into a new era. I left feeling that I had achieved everything I wanted to, and I know not everyone gets to say that.

Talks and writing

Where I've spoken

In the press

The culture work was written about by Happy, The Media Leader and the Mirror.

Selected posts

A few posts from the Reddico years.

Contact

Get in touch

If you'd like to talk about an advisory or board role, or have a question about Salience, I'd be glad to hear from you.

Email

hello@nickredding.co.uk

LinkedIn

linkedin.com/in/ndredding

Salience

For anything about the product, visit salience.com.