Next Level Pros - #105: SEO Strategies in 2024

Episode Date: May 31, 2024

Hey Founder Nation! In this episode, we're diving deep into the world of SEO with the incredible Matt Diamante. Matt, a digital marketing guru with over 14 years of experience, shares his top strategies for improving your website's search engine ranking. Whether you're a local business owner or looking to expand your online presence, this episode is packed with practical tips and insights. Tune in to learn how to leverage blog posts, internal links, and keyword research to drive traffic and grow your business! Highlights: "If you're an expert on your topic, it should be easy for you to answer questions that you're hearing every single day from your clients." "Google rewards consistency. Posting quality content regularly is a long-term strategy that pays off." "We're training ChatGPT to be an expert on that topic by using the best information from the top search results." Timestamps: 00:00 - Introduction to SEO with Matt Diamante04:45 - The Importance of a Well-Structured Homepage11:50 - Key Elements for a Local Business Website19:31 - Utilizing ChatGPT for Content Creation20:28 - Keyword Research Techniques Using SEMrush22:24 - Crafting Unique Content with AI Assistance24:39 - The Role of Blog Posts in SEO Strategy27:06 - Maintaining Consistency in Content Posting27:43 - Google’s Preference for Regular Updates34:20 - Internal Linking and Its Impact on SEO Dive in and discover how you can take your SEO game to the next level with actionable advice from one of the best in the business! Looking to scale your business? Want to learn directly from the same team that helped me sell my last business for 9 figures? Click this link below to check out how you can work with us. https://nextlevelhomepros.com/grow-home-service-vsl Join my community - Founder Acceleration ⁠https://www.founderacceleration.com  ⁠Apply for our next Mastermind:h⁠ttps://www.thefoundermastermind.com⁠Golf with Chris h⁠ttps://www.golfwithchris.com⁠ Watch my latest PodcastApple- ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-founder-podcast/id1687030281S⁠Spotify- ⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/1e0cL2vI1JAtQrojSOA7D2⁠YouTube - @thefounderspodcast

Help us understand how SEO works. As far as Google tells us, which they're not always 100% honest in what they're saying and what actually works, but as far as they're telling us, they want to see helpful content. I actually interviewed this guy recently. He had a pool company in Virginia and he told me he made $100 million. The way that he did that was he spent two hours every single day for like two to three years writing blog posts and answering his customers questions that he would hear on a daily basis. Like that is all he did. He didn't have keyword research.

He wasn't doing all that stuff. And it's just insane. The crazy thing is the guy was just just wishing for chat GBT back then. It's like chat GBT makes our lives so much easier. Like myself and my team, like we're using it every single day. And like, that is a big part of actually writing content and partially doing some research as well, because chat GPT will give you an exact answer to the question that you have very quickly. But obviously, you can't just take chat GPT says or any AI and put that on your website and expect Google to be like, yeah, good job. Like we're going to rank you, we're going to send you traffic like human people to

your website. That's not the case. So for those of you who are listening, who don't know what SEO stands for, it's search engine optimization. Because a lot of the people who are following me on social media and that I talk to aren't really well versed in, you know, digital marketing and, you know, SEO search engine optimizations. You know, my parents ask me, what do you do? I say, I help people show up higher on Google. Hey, Founder Nation, I'm excited to share with you another incredible episode. Mr. Matt Diamante, Search Engine Optimization Extraordinaire. This guy has been doing digital marketing for the last 14 plus years. He has done incredible work. You've probably seen him on Instagram. He has over 175,000 followers right there.

What would you do if you doubled the amount of clientele that came into your business every single week? How is your search engine optimization strategy working? And is it the proper one in 2024? Are you willing to push through even when you're not seeing results? Expect to learn the three things that you should do right now to improve the search engine optimization of your business. Learn how to grow through writing daily blogs, utilizing chat GBT, and understand how exactly Matt took a following of 1,500 and converted it into 175,000 Instagram followers in 14 months. You will learn all of this and much more on today's episode of the Founder Podcast. Welcome to the show, Matt. Super excited to have you here today. So we are going to jump right in,

talk SEO. So you are actually, the way I actually found you was on Instagram. You know, you have these incredible reels, you share some incredible knowledge, right? 2024, I would venture to say SEO is still very important, but a lot of people have kind of put it on the back burner when it comes to internet marketing or digital marketing, right? A lot of people are spending money on ads, Facebook, those types of things, but you teach a more organic approach, especially for local. Tell us about SEO and how it's different in 2024. I owned a business back in 2012. Obviously, the game has changed. Tell us what the SEO game is all about right now in 2024. So for those of you who are listening who don't know what SEO stands for, it's search engine optimization. And I'm saying that because a lot of the people who are following me on social media and that i talk to aren't really well versed in you know digital marketing and you know seo search

engine optimization so i always say you know you know my parents ask me what do you do i say i help people show up higher on google and like they're like oh okay like i dumped it down so much that they're like i finally understand what my son does for work. You don't just work in your basement. You actually do something productive. Yeah. For years it was like, oh yeah, my son builds websites or he writes articles on the internet and it was really hard for them to explain to other people what exactly I did. So just over the last year and a half, I really was able to, you know, I keep saying dumb it down, but it's not dumbing it down for dumb people. It's summing it down for people who don't have no idea, you know, what this whole industry

is. Um, so to answer your question, uh, SEO in 2024, is it important? What's the, you know, what's the strategy? Does it still work? Uh, yes, it still works. It's still very important. The thing that really gets a lot of people is how much work actually goes into SEO and how long it takes

to see results. Like it's much easier for me to post a reel on Instagram and get that like the instant gratification. Like I know within 10 minutes, if I'm like, if I'm not getting likes on, I'm like, this is a bad piece of content. I need to like rethink things. But with SEO, you know, you're waiting three to six months before you're seeing results. And it's just like that, you know, the, there's no instant gratification there. And like the gratification does come later on, uh, when you start seeing those results, but it's, yeah, there's just, there's no instant. So, so first of all, I guess, help us understand how SEO works for dumb it down. Like, is it backlinks? Is it the articles, right?

Is the keywords? What is Google looking for? Because most of us, when we're going and searching, it's typically Google or chat GBT now, which is kind of interesting. But let's talk Google. Like, what is Google looking for right now in 2024? So as far as Google tells us, which they're not always 100 percent honest in what they're saying and what actually works. But as far as they're telling us, they want to see helpful content. So basically, I actually interviewed this guy recently called Marcus Sheridan,

and he had a pool company in Virginia. he told me he made a hundred million dollars like through his local pool company by franchising, by doing all this kind of stuff. But the way that he did that was he spent two hours every single day for like two to three years writing blog posts and answering his customers questions that he would hear on a daily basis. Like that is all he did. He didn't have keyword research. He wasn't doing all that stuff. And it's just insane. Dude, the crazy thing is the guy was just, just wishing for chat GBT back then. Oh my God. Like, Oh, it like chat GBT makes our life so much easier. Like myself and my team, like we're using it every single day. And like, that is a big part of actually writing content and

partially doing some research as well, because chat GPT will give you an exact answer to the question that you have very quickly. But obviously, I'm saying obviously, it's obvious to me, you can't just take what chat GPT says or any AI and put that on your website and expect Google to be like, yeah, good job. Like we're going to rank you. We're going to send you traffic like human people to your website. That's not the case. Um, the content actually needs to be helpful. And that's like, that's the biggest thing that people aren't doing right now. Like, uh, Google just did an update recently where they're basically trying to get rid of spam and the search results. So this, all these people using AI, I think it's something like 40% of all new posts or all new pages are generated by AI. Wow, it's not good.

Wow. Yeah. Because like, you know, you're doing this podcast, and you're posting on social media, like you're creating unique, helpful content. And if it resonates with people, then people are going to come to you, they're gonna hire you, they're gonna buy whatever you're selling. And that's the exact same thing that you should be doing with your blog posts. Like, um, for example, I'm looking, uh, we're, we're, we're getting turf for our backyard. We have like this 12 foot by 12 foot space. And, um, that's where the dogs go to the bathroom. And we were doing a bunch of research, like what kind of turf is best for dogs is artificial turf even good for dogs like what's the drainage like does it smell like we're asking it all these questions i said asking

it we're googling all these questions right and uh we ended up going with a company that was local that was answering these questions it's just wild like they obviously know what they're talking about so how are they answering these questions are they doing it with like an FAQ on their website? Are they doing it with blog posts on their website? Like what is the best practice? How would you structure that as a business owner? So people think of blogging a lot as like, okay, here are my thoughts. And I'm just going to share, you know, my day, that whole kind of thing.

That was like back in the day when blogs first came out, that's what it was right now. Blogs are basically, um, every single blog post on your website is covering one topic, right? They're informational, they're helpful, they're educational. Um, and you know, there's a lot of how to's like if you Google, uh, you know, how to do something specific in Photoshop, you will get a step-by-step article slash blog post. You can use those terms interchangeably, um, that details exactly what you need to do. So whenever you're doing any kind of SEO or answering these questions, like you are doing that in the form of blog posts. Um, and there like, you still do need to optimize, you know, if you have products

on your website, you need to optimize those pages. It's slightly different, but also very similar to writing a blog post. Same thing if you have services on your site and you need to optimize your homepage as well so that, is it like a Wix? Is it a, like what, what would you recommend? And then two, like what kind of, like, let's just use like home products as an example. And turf would be a perfect example, right? Like they, they sell turf to the end user at the home. They have a physical location. How would you break down like what the website should look like as far as like a homepage, a product page, a blog, a FAQ? Give us some just basic recommendations there. Absolutely. So your first question was relating to what platform should you build a website on? I highly, highly, highly recommend WordPress for anything except e-commerce.

If you're doing e-commerce, use Shopify because it just makes it easier. They have their own cart integration. You don't want to get caught up in trying to use WooCommerce, which is an SEO, sorry, not an SEO. It's a WordPress plugin. And it's just a little bit more complicated setup and it doesn't always work right. So if you're doing any kind of e-commerce use Shopify, if you're doing anything else, WordPress is going to be the King. Um, and I say that because those two platforms, you can really customize, you can add, um, you know, some kind of hidden SEO stuff like schema markup, which basically that's just text, um, that you're giving to Google to give them a little bit more insight about

what that page is about. Humans don't see that. But Google likes it. So that's like one of the things you can do on those platforms. Is that pretty easy to add that in? Is it just like a window on WordPress that you put some stuff in? Or how does people add the schema markup? So usually you would get some kind of, you know, insert header and footer scripts plugin.

If you just Google that header footer scripts on WordPress, you'll find a plugin that does that. But you can go on individual pages and actually paste that code there. And to write the code, you know, you used to have to know like, oh, I need to do a little bit of coding, write schema, markup, all this kind of stuff. You can literally copy paste all the text from, you know, how to install turf in your backyard from that blog post. You can put that into chat GPT and say, write me schema markup for this. I want FAQs. I want this. I want that. And it'll cut, it'll output the perfect schema markup for you. Obviously like you have to tell it what you want it to do, but it'll output that and then paste that right into your website. And there you go.

You have schema markup. So what a website would look like if you're a local brick and mortar business, let's say a turf company, you want to have a homepage, you know, talks about what you do. We sell turf. You know, that wouldn't necessarily be a bad headline on the site. I mean, it might be, but when somebody comes to your site right away, they should know what do you do, how to contact you, what your hours of operations are. And that's all stuff that you should have on your homepage. You can also feature on your homepage, like links to your top products or, you know, most recent blog posts, stuff like that. But you need to have some kind of call to action. Contact us for a quote, book an appointment. Now, give us a call here, whatever your call to action is, or download

this guide. Have that on your homepage. And there's some, I don't even know how to say it, but like there's some, you can have an about page on your website too, but the about page is never going to rank. Right. So I usually say, talk about your company on your website too, but the about page is never going to rank. Right. Right. So I usually say, talk about your company on your homepage, because that is basically the same thing as your about page. Both those pages are going to be competing for what you want to rank for. So I highly recommend do not have an about page. Just put that stuff on your homepage. And if you want to, you can still in your menu, put a button that says about, and then when somebody clicks on that, you can have them scroll right down to that section on your homepage. But I would keep all that information on your homepage. Um, you need

to have some kind of contact page, right? If somebody's contacting you, um, have a terms and service section in your footer terms of service, whatever it's called, privacy policy, cookie policy, have all that stuff down there. Um, Google likes to see that. And especially if you're on any platforms running ads, they also really like to see that you have a privacy policy. And those are really easy to do. You can get chat GPT to generate one of those for you, or there's tons of generators online for that kind of stuff. So if it sounds complicated, it's really not, I promise you. So yeah, homepage, then those like terms of service pages, don't do an about page. Make sure you have a blog page.

You call it blog, you call it news, you can call it learn, whatever you want. And then on that page, you'll find all the blog posts that you have. Yeah. And how does that work? How does that work for like a blog? Like for example, on WordPress, do they individually index each post or how is that all on one continuous page forever? So Chris, you're using some complicated words here. Indexing. Let's just talk about that for a second. Indexing is basically, so think of Google as a library, right? But instead of books, it has links. And a lot of people think that when you do a Google search, Google's like

scouring the internet for all these links. That's not the case. Google already has a preloaded or a library of links. And that's what we call an index, right? So if your website is indexed on Google, that means google knows about that link um so to get back to your question um every single blog post that you have and every page on your website has the opportunity to be indexed individually in google so somebody can rent that book somebody can read that book basically um and google won't necessarily index every single page on your website, even if you submit all of them to Google search console, which for those of you who don't know, Google search

console is a free tool by Google that lets you submit your website basically and say, Hey, you know, look at me. I want you to show me in the search results. Uh, and it gives you a bunch of analytics and some great features as well, but it's free. So take advantage of that. So quick question on that. If you don't do that, will you be found on Google?

Yes. Actually, you could still really be found on Google. We've had websites in the past where we just haven't done that and they've like gone crazy on Google. So if you're doing a backlink strategy, which basically is getting links from another website, so somebody else's website, and they're linking back to your website, if they're indexed, you will likely be indexed as well. There's a bunch of different ways for Google to find out about your site. That is one of them, submitting your site map and registering

with Google Search Console is another way. But I'm finding it's not very, very necessary if you're already an established site and you haven't done it yet. Got it. But if you're a brand new site, absolutely sign up for Google search console, submit your site map, which again, I know I'm over explaining things, but a site map is basically a page that lists all the other pages on your site. And essentially what that does is right. Like Google has these little crawlers, right? Like they're crawling the internet, scouring different information to be able to create these help me. And, uh, then they'll send their little crawlers or little spiders over to you and they'll, they'll check you out. Nice. Nice. Are you a home service business owner struggling to get your time back? Maybe you're feeling like you have to do everything yourself, or maybe you aren't able to break through that certain revenue plateau. You feel

like owning your business isn't quite what you thought it would be. Am I right? I understand you more than you know. I've launched many businesses throughout my life, and I was lucky enough to have built multiple businesses that scaled to two nine-figure exits. But more importantly, I have had even more businesses fail. Why would that be more important? I learned a ton from each venture that I was a part of, each teaching me lessons about how to hire the right people, how to price my product, how to build out proper SOPs, and even building the right culture. These lessons are what led me to being able to sell my most recent business for nearly $200 million. Why am I sharing all this with you? Because I've been in your shoes, feeling the same exact feelings that you are.

And if I knew back then what I know now, life might have been a lot easier for me. Unfortunately, I can't travel back in time, but I can help you so that you don't have to. How? I package everything that I learned into over 150 videos all about my wins and mistakes that I've made in business over the years. And I want to give you access to these videos. But it's so much more than just a bunch of videos. I've created a community of home professionals just like you, where people interact and share ideas with each other. Plus, we host live calls every single week where you get direct access to people like myself and my business partners that were a part of these different ventures who are experts in marketing,

operations, software, and even more. All you have to do is book a free call with one of our team members to see if this would be a good fit for you. That way, I can help you take your business to the next level, making you a next level home pro. So you have this blog, and I guess back to my previous question, does WordPress automatically create individual indexes for every single blog post or does it look like one indexed page? So on the main blog page, so, you know, if you have like, I'll use my website, for example. So hey, Tony dot C-A slash blog. That is a list. You know, that one link there lists every single blog post. Well, not every single, I think it's like 50 or a hundred blog posts that I have. It'll list all

of those there. And then when you click on those, each one of those is its own page. Does that make sense? Yeah. And does it, does that, did you have to set it up that way or does it automatically do that as you add it? Yeah. It automatically will add the newest post to the very top. You can change the sorting, the way that it sorts the posts, but typically you want to leave it like this. The newest post is at the very top. And what would you say, what would you recommend? So obviously ChatJBT is new to the scene the last year and a half, and it's just been going gangbusters as far as people utilizing it. As you explained earlier, 40% of a lot of new content.

How would you recommend people use Chad GBT in this type of strategy in producing these type of blog posts? Okay, so I'll just full, tell you what we do. So we find a keyword that we want to rank for, and we do this using, you know, it could be a number of tools, but like we like using SEMrush. Um, it's an, it's a more expensive tool. So I often will say something S E M R U S H. Got it. Um, so SEMrush is a really good rush. Yeah. Yeah. Got it. I guess I never really thought about that some rush. So yeah, that's the site that we use. There's a bunch of other ones out there that are cheaper. The results are all kind of different in terms of the keyword research, whether it's the search volume, you know, is slightly different, which search volume is how many people are

searching that on average per month, that specific keyword. So anyway, so we find a keyword that we want to rank for, and then we look up the keyword variations. So if it's, for example, I'll just say for me, web design in Hamilton, it could also be website design Hamilton. It could also be website designers Hamilton. So there's all these like slight variations of those keywords. And how would you identify, how would you identify like those variations? Is it by putting it in Google and, and seeing like the next 10 recommended type searches or how, how would you do that? That is one way to do it.

That's not the way that we always do it, but, uh, using something like SEMrush, it'll actually give you related keywords. Got it. Like, like you type in a keyword, it'll say like, here are the other keywords that are related to that topic. Um, and then you can go through there and cherry pick the ones that are actually related because not everything's a hundred percent accurate. So you still need that human element, uh, you know, in this world of AI. So you go through, you find all these secondary keywords, or, you know, if you type in something

on Google, you can see that people also ask, You can group those together, cluster those questions together if they're about the same topic. And then you can include all of that in one blog post. So you're just answering a bunch of questions in that blog post. So what we do is we'll find the main keyword we want to rank for. We'll put that into Google. We'll look at the top three to five sites that are ranking for that. We'll copy all the text from those pages, put them into ChatGPT and say, ChatGPT summarize this article. And then it spits out a paragraph or two saying like

summarizing the article. We do that for the top five or three to five positions on Google or links on Google. And then from there, we're basically training ChatGPT to like be an expert on that topic because like the top five search results for that, you know, they're the best. It's like, it should technically be the best information about that specific topic. So we're training ChatGPT to be an expert in that chat about that topic. And then we create our own outline. So we look at the top five, three to five articles or three to five, um, links on Google. And then we grab all the heading tags and subheading tags. So yeah, if you don't know what that is, it's just like the bigger text on

the screen. Um, you know, it's just like this, like a, a subtopic in that main article. So we grab that and then we put it into, you know into a blank document and we say, which one of these aren't relevant? We get rid of anything that's not relevant. And then we also add in some of our own questions, some of our own keywords. So we're making a really unique piece of content in terms of the outline so far. So here's everything we want to include in this piece of content. And then from there, we paste our outline into chat GPT. And we say, using the information you summarized above, fill in this article. And so are you just writing one article? Are you doing multiple articles with this information?

So that is for one specific article. Got it. Right. We're talking about like a blog, a blog post is like a micro topic right we're not covering everything about for example if it's turf we're not covering every single thing about turf uh relating to the drainage relating to is this pet safe all that like we're not doing all that like the one article is going to be something like is artificial turf safe for dogs and we're going to talk about dogs and we're going to talk about the different types of artificial turf. And like, we may mention drainage, but then you would have another article saying, uh, you know, the different types of drainage for artificial grass, you know, something like that, artificial turf. And then with that, obviously you're, so you're getting

very micro on the actual information. Are you including things like, uh, a turf installer in Hamilton in, in each of that? And every, do you have like a certain like five or 10 keywords or phrases that you're targeting and you're putting into every single article, but excuse me. So basically, like if you had a service business, right? And let's say it's artificial turf, you might have, you know, five or 10 actual services that you do there. So one could be artificial turf installation. One could be removal. One could be, you know, whatever else. Let's pretend there's five. So for each of those pages, you're going to want to target that specific

keyword in your city, right? So artificial turf installation, Hamilton would be a keyword potentially, or it could be Hamilton artificial turf installers or whatever the actual keyword is. Once you've done your keyword research, each of those pages is going to have a specific keyword and talk about that keyword and use that keyword a couple of times, at least on the page. Where blog posts come in handy is somewhere in the blog posts, you can mention like, if you are looking for an artificial turf or a turf installation company in Hamilton, you know, contact us. You can take the words artificial turf installer Hamilton and link that to the corresponding page on your own website.

So backlinks within your website. Yeah, those are called internal links. Right. So you're internally linking from one page to another page on your website. And that helps Google categorize and understand what that page you're linking to is about, because you're actually just describing that page. You're saying this page is about turf installation in Hamilton. Right. Got it. Got it. So, and then with this strategy, how often are you posting for one particular website? Is it,

is it a daily blog? Is it a weekly blog? What would you say? So that's a really, it could be a really in-depth question, but basically like what we're doing right now for our clients and ourselves is we're posting twice a week. We're trying not to overdo it. Like you want the consistency and you want a lot. It's a long-term strategy. Like if you just try to brute force it by posting 10 articles a day, you know, on your website, that's, you're probably not writing quality content, it's probably gonna be a lot of copy pasted from chat GPT. And like, do you really think you're going to be able to

keep that up? Right? For months or years? Probably not. Right. So two a week. It's really it I'm saying it's really easy to do. I have a team of writers and SEO specialists. So it's really easy for me to do. But like, if you're an expert on your topic, it should be easy for you to answer questions that you're hearing every single day from your clients, from your customers, whatever it might be, or even going back and be like, cool, what are some questions that people have asked me in the past? Right. Just answer those questions. Got it. Got it. And would you, would you say that Google rewards consistency more than like, I'm assuming it's kind of like the Apple a day approach where if you did 30

articles today and nothing for 30 days and then 30 articles and then nothing, right? Like, uh, would it, would one a day be, be more rewarded by Google? If you can do one a day and you can keep that up, absolutely. Like the guy I mentioned earlier, like he did that for like two years and he's probably publishing one blog post a day or, you know, two a day kind of thing. Um, but Google is a very different beast back then in terms of what they, what they want to see. Um, I can imagine back then they were like, Oh, that's just like, I want to see a ton of content so that we can bring people to Google and like we can be Google. But now like with AI, it's, I don't think it actually matters like how often you're posting. Like if you're posting every

single day and it's quality content and you're actually, your actual intent is to help somebody, don't think there's going to be an issue there, but it turns into an issue when you're like, Oh, I'm going to publish, you know, every single piece of content known to man about this topic in, you know, the next 60 days that, yeah, it might be garbage and yeah, it's not going to help you. Got it. Got it. So changing topics a little bit. Hey, Hey Tony, your name's not Tony. How did you go and create a company called Hey Tony? Okay. So I probably answer this question every single day because you're right. My name's Matt. It's not Tony. So years ago, I had an office downtown Toronto and I was walking to lunch and I overheard these two like big, really burly construction guys talking.

They're changing over the streetcar tracks. So they had to be like, you know, the biggest guys you've ever seen. And the one guy goes, hey, Tony, you always know how to put a smile on my face. And I just thought like walking by, I didn't like really register it at the time. But like looking back, I was like, what a genuine expression of emotion that you wouldn't expect to hear from that kind of person right and like maybe I'm putting that person in a box a little bit but like typically you don't hear that guy be like hey man you make me happy you put a smile on my face you know you brightened up my day whatever it might be right um and I was like that's the kind of transparency

and feeling I want to have with my clients where like, we can be honest with each other, good or bad. And I want to put a smile on your face. I want you to put a smile on my face. I want to love working together, right? That's it. That's the name. Love it. So how, how long have you been running your business and what originally got you into internet marketing and search engine optimization? I've been running my business for six years now. Okay. Before that I was freelancing, but I actually started my business by accident. I just, I was freelancing and I had too many clients and it was all digital marketing. I had too many clients to service myself. I was working like 14 hours a day and I was like, I need help.

So I hired somebody and it really sucked at the time because I'm like, dang, there goes like, you know, a third of my income or whatever it was. And now I'm like, I got to build back up again. This sucks. Like this sucks so much. But taking that step allowed me to make more money because I could bring on more clients and like basically have a double, you know, instead of working 40 hours a week, I could work 80 hours a week. Well, so only working 40 because I had that extra person. The original way I got into digital marketing was back in like, was this 2009 or something? 2008? Anyways, I was in a band back in the day and we weren't good. I won't tell you what the band name is unless you really want to know and you really ask me. We weren't that great uh in

terms of like the actual music but we were able to get people to shows and all this kind of stuff and i'm like this is what i want to do with my life i want to be in a band i want to travel i play shows uh and i was like what could help me with that my parents really want me to go to school uh like go to college and i was like i can take an advertising program because that will help me with my band i'll learn how to do facebook i do Google. I'll learn all this kind of stuff. So I took a three-year program and fell in love with marketing and out of love with the band. I love it. Love it. Yeah. I originally fell in love with digital marketing through SEO. I read Tim Ferriss's book, The Four-Hour Workweek. And I'm like, wait, what? I can do this digital nomad

work from a computer. And at this point in my career, I'm managing teams and I'm banging my head against the wall and just like, I hate this. I want to work less. And so i go and i build an seo company back in 2012 which and 2012 was kind of like the the the start of it but it was pretty hot right like se yeah you you couldn't go and and buy facebook ads or or i'm not even sure if you could buy youtube ads back then um but uh yeah like so like it was like one of the original right right? It was either PPC, pay-per-click, or search engine optimization. And so everybody was trying to play that game there. And man, I got to a point where I had my article writer in the Philippines, right? I had my guy that was buying all the backlinks and doing all the backlink work out of India, right?

And I would just go and land a few clients and I was sitting there and I was just collecting a monthly check, sending like three emails, um, like literally doing nothing. I would just, this, I had one guy that was kind of managing over in the Philippines and he'd create a report that I would just forward on to, to my customers. And, uh, yeah, it was, it was interesting. Like that's where i first found my love but i quickly became bored with it like this was this was like man i got my bills paid uh i didn't really like i'm set yeah like this and so that's when i got back into what i what i deem real business um at uh but but that planted a seed for me that always just kind of found like desired.

So you've done digital marketing and all different types of things, obviously, since, you know, 09. And you've really started to make a name for yourself on Instagram. You got 175,000 subscribers. You get thousands of views, if not millions of views on your reels. What made you decide that you're like, I'm going to be the guy about SEO? Because obviously you do other type of digital marketing, but what made you hone in on SEO? I've always been an SEO guy at heart. Even when I was in school, I had an SEO class and, you know, we got we had this assignment. It was like, OK, make a 10 page website, print out the actual code, like, you know, physical printed out. And the teacher wanted or the professor wanted to know exactly what we did on every page.

And he had said at one point, he's like, oh, yeah, the more pages you have on your website. So every page is basically a door to your business. The more pages you have, the more doors, the more people can find your business, the, you know, the more traffic you'll get. And I was like, Oh, what a cool, cool idea. So I took that 10 page website assignment. And I think I had like three or 500 pages, like it was something crazy. And this is before I knew how to use WordPress. So this was all like manually coded. Wow, like this crazy website. Like it didn't look great but like it started actually ranking it was a restaurant reviews site for where I went to school and people started emailing me being like hey we don't serve sushi we're an Italian restaurant why do you have a negative

review on our site and it was just because I was grabbing like a bunch of random reviews and changing keywords out here and there but anyways I handed in the assignment and like I literally couldn't find a binder big enough I had to like tie string through the holes and it was like a full ream of paper. And he was like, what is this? I'm like, that's my assignment. He's like, it's a 10 page website. I'm like, yeah, but I, you know, I did a little bit more. And then I got a, he offered me an internship at his company cause he was a part-time teacher. And that's where I, that's where I fell in love with it. That's awesome. Yeah. So that's, that's an incredible story. Like, so obviously you,

you got your passion early on, you went and you did this internship and so like that kind of helped you. So it was, it's at what point did you decide your social media presence was going to be more targeted? Because at least the reels that I see, they're like almost all of them are search engine optimization targeted. Is that correct? Yeah. So the reason I chose that was because most of the clients that I had at the time, which up until early 2023, I was a referral only business basically. And it really sucks when you're referral only because you don't know where your next client's coming from. You don't know if you lose a client, you know, when the next one's going to come. So there's really high highs,

really low lows, and you kind of have to scramble. And I was like, I want more of a, you know, a pipeline of people and a wait list of people coming into, into my agency. But, uh, yeah, most of our clients at the time were SEO base and I already had a system. I already had a like standard operating procedures for that. I had tutorials, all this kind of stuff. So I was like, this just makes sense to talk about that. Um, and not that you asked, but I'm going to tell you anyways, the reason why I started posting on social media, um, I hadn't done it in like five or six years personally or professionally, like nothing. I hated social media. I hated Instagram. Didn't even have it on my phone. Now I can't get off the app, but I read two books. One book was called

The One Thing. And it was basically like, what's one thing you can do every single day to achieve your one year, five year, 10 year goal. And I was like, the one thing I can do every single day to achieve your one year, five year, 10 year goal. And I was like, the one thing I can do every single day is pull out my phone and talk about SEO. I can give tips, I can give trick or tips, tricks, all that kind of stuff. And I'd also just finished reading a book by Gary V called jab, jab, jab, right hook, which apparently he's releasing a sequel to in like a month. I'm not trying to plug his book, but I'll leave it there. I'm looking forward to that. But I read that book and it's talking about social media and organic social media more specifically and give away everything you know, and then charge people for like the 0.01%. So how long ago did you start posting on a daily basis about SEO? January 11th, 2023.

Wow. So like a year and three months ago. Wow. So you're, you're telling me that literally you built, and how many followers did you have at that point? Like 200. You had 200 followers and you built this thing up. I'm assuming you didn't buy any of your followers of the 175,000. No, it's the same thing. Like if you're, and like, I've had people accuse me, like, these are all bots, like all this kind of stuff. And I'm like, well, look at the actual interaction I'm getting on stuff. Like I can tell if I go to your profile, Chris, and I see, like, I can tell right away if you bought followers or not.

Right. Um, well it's, it's simple, right? Like for, for anybody that's out there, if you go and you see somebody has a,000 followers and you go and you see their video views and they have like 200 to 300 on their last 10 reels, guess what? They bought all their followers. They're not real. It's interesting. My profile is a little bit different. I got shadow banned by Instagram, you know, not to divulge my political views too much, but during COVID, you know, because I was fighting back against like everything that was happening politically and everything like that.

And literally, I went from getting, you know, anywhere from 10 to 100,000 views per video to hundreds. And it literally happened overnight. And so I've had to slowly build that back and build reputation with Instagram, with Facebook, to be able to have this shadow ban. And I'm still fighting to this day. But yeah, it's interesting how the all the dang algorithm yeah the media controls the world man it's insane it it is it is crazy so man you've you've done this january 2023 so we're talking for the 13 14 months you posted has it been every single day

um i've missed a couple days here and there but my goal was one because i read these two books i was like these guys are either geniuses or like it's just like a scam and i'm like i'm gonna prove them right or prove them wrong so i was like i'm gonna do every single day and then about three months in like i didn't really have any traction three months in i was just posting because i made this commitment to myself and you know two 100 200 a hundred, 200 views a video. Um, and then three months and I was like, you know what, screw it. I'm going to start posting three times a day. I need more data. I need to get better at this a lot quicker and like, you know, get rid of that learning curve. Um, and I think three months into the posting three times a day, I had my first

video go viral and hit a million views out of nowhere. And like, I was slowly getting, you know, followers here and there. I think I got up to like 1500 followers by the before something went viral. And then within a week, it was like 15,000 followers. And within a month, it was like 30,000 followers. And I was like, this is insane. Like, I don't know what to do. But since I had this goal, or this challenge to myself, like post every single day. I was like, I know I need to keep posting every single day, three times a day, whatever it is. And, um, I already had the experience to do it because I'd already been doing that. Right. Right. So a lot of people were like, Oh, if I only, if I went viral, I'm like, if you went viral, you wouldn't know what to do with it. Like you'd be screwed. It wouldn't do anything for your business. Right. Like, yeah. So tell me about how posting every day has transformed your business.

Because first of all, I just want to point out for the listeners, like this commitment to daily taking action and then not only daily taking action, but tripling that action, regardless of the fruit or the results is absolutely necessary to be successful in anything, right? Like the hardest thing about business is doing the work without seeing the fruit. And, and most people aren't willing to push through that. So one, congratulations. And I applaud you for, for pushing through that because I do believe that is one of the key principles to success in any business. But yeah, tell me about like now you've started to see the fruit, right? 175,000 followers. How has that transformed your agency and your business on the backend? So my agency before I was posting, I had a staff of three, including myself. Now I have 10 people on my team. I have

a wait list, like two or three months long of people who have already paid their first month to sign or it's like to hold their spot basically. And yeah, it's just like, it is really nuts. Like the amount of money I'm spending on backlinks alone per month is, you know, more than I made some years, which is like before I started my business, but like, it's, it's absolutely crazy. Um, and you know, like I've been doing digital marketing for, you know, over a decade and I don't even know what the timing is on this now. Um, 10 to 15 years, we'll just say that. Um, and I've helped, you know, YouTubers and influencers like develop communities and launch courses and build their email lists and do Facebook. I like,

I know how to do all of this stuff. And I had to learn how to do it really well so that I would have a job back in my freelancing days. And I was like, oh, shit, my Instagram is starting to pop off. I'm like, all the videos that my standard operating procedure courses that I had that I used to train my team, I'm like, I'm going to start selling that. I'm going to start selling that. I'm going to start my growing my email list. We're going to start like just doing all this stuff. And like that alone, like I don't have to run an agency. I could just do Instagram full time and

like sell my own stuff. Like that's the scale that we're at. And like, I could live really well off that. That's, that's phenomenal. Nice, nice work. Um, last couple of questions. So if a local business owner, let's talk at a brick and mortar, we're going back to like a turf type company, hasn't done anything besides has a website, has a phone number, call to action, some basic stuff, but really hasn't done much from search engine optimization standpoint, what are three things that you would do day one to start turning that around? The first thing that I would do is I would audit their website. And what I mean by audit is look at all the pages and say, what keyword are each page trying or is each page trying to rank for, right? So is your homepage, does it even include the keyword

that you want it to rank for your blog posts or your whatever other pages? So we'd basically do an audit there. Do you have a title tag, which is the blue link you see on Google, like the title of the page? Do you have a title tag? Does that include the keyword?

Does your meta description, which is the text underneath that blue listing on Google, does that include the keyword you want to rank for? Is it descriptive? Is it convincing people to click over to your site versus your competitor? And then I would also make sure that the heading tags, so those are basically just like the big text on the page, you know, or the subheadings, like do those include the keyword as well? And then you could do a bunch of other stuff like how fast is the website does it load really quickly does it load slowly there's tools there's free tools that you can use provided by google that will let you look that stuff up like can we speed this thing up people if they come to your

website it takes too long to load they're going somewhere else so at very least that's the stuff that i would do in terms of seo um but if you're if we're talking like conversion rate optimization so getting more people to convert when they come to your website, you need to have a call to action, you know, almost everywhere on the screen, like on the screen at all times, I should say, right, call me get a quote, book an appointment. Buy my thing, whatever it is, download my ebook, like you want somebody to take an action when they come to your website. So that's that's a very important tip to get somebody get ahold of you. Dude, it baffles me when, when like a company's doing

like millions of dollars a year and they, they look to me for consulting or whatnot. And I go and I, and they don't even like have a phone number or they don't even have like a form or any, any type of like call to action. Or if they do, it's like buried deep in their website. And it's just like, dude, you are missing out on so much, just like easy money. Yeah. It's, uh, yeah. So a couple of years ago I was working with this woman who was like, she was like 20 years old and she was making 10 grand a month selling her own products. And I was like, man, if I was 20, I was making 10 grand a month. Like, I don't know. I'd be like somewhere on a beach, you know, retired or whatever it was.

But so we started working with her and I looked, I'm like, how are you getting business? Like, how are you making this 10 grand a month? She's like, I just post pictures on Instagram. And I'm like, that is ridiculous. She had like 20,000 followers, like nothing too crazy. And people just like DM her. Well, yeah, she would just like, I don't know, people liked her product. And I was like, how many customers have you had?

And she was like, over the last year, like 1,500 or 2,000 or something. I'm like, have you ever emailed these people? Have you run Facebook ads? Have you done anything? She's like, no. So I go to her website, not great, bad user experience, but people want the product. So like like they're going through and buying it which is a testament to if you have a good product people will find a way unless they can't find your site at all she was doing a lot of organic social yeah um but uh yeah so and i was like i normally don't say this to clients or to anybody, but I can double your revenue. Starting next week. And then that next

month, she went from 10K to 20K a month. And it was very easy for us to do because she wasn't doing anything. That's wild. That's wild. I love it. Hey, Tony. Hey, Tony, let's go. Hey, Tony. Dude, Matt, appreciate it. You've been a pleasure. You shared some incredible truth bombs that are going to help the audience, especially those that are launching their business or really trying to hone in on, on their SEO. So I appreciate that. Where is the best way for our viewers to, to follow you? Instagram is probably the best way. And I believe, and I, you're going to laugh at me. Uh, I don't know exactly what my handle is. I'm going to look

right now on my phone to give you the exact thing. I think it's at Hey Tony at Hey Tony agency is the, yeah. Oh no. At Hey Tony dot agency. Love it. At Hey Tony dot agency on Instagram. Awesome. And then, uh, I'm assuming you have a YouTube channel as well. I do. You can just look up Matt Diamante there. YouTube's hard, man. It's a lot more work than Instagram and like the production has to be higher and like you need like stuff flying in and all this. Like I have some videos up there. They're really, they're, I think they're really good. They're really helpful, but like, I can't commit to doing those once a week. It's just like, Oh my God, I could do a podcast maybe every week, but like the editing and dude, you're not, you're not wrong, man. I got a, I got a full blown video production, uh, you know, and we do, so we host our podcast

on, on Spotify and Apple and YouTube and everything else. Like, dude, it's crazy. Spotify, I get 200,000 hours a month, right? So I'm getting all kinds of... But then on YouTube, same exact content. I have just over 2,000 subscribers and I'm just clawing and scraping for views. Dude, it's the craziest thing. Craziest thing.

Yeah. So awesome, man. Well, I'm sure there's some incredible content on YouTube. We'll have the guys, everybody that's watching this, go like and subscribe, follow Matt. He's going to continue to share incredible, incredible stuff. Thank you so much, Matt, for your time. Until next time!