In this episode of the Unscripted SEO Podcast, Jeremy Rivera sits down with Matt Bailey, a digital marketing veteran with nearly 30 years of experience spanning from the pre-Google AltaVista era to today's AI-driven landscape. Matt shares his journey from building real estate websites with journalism principles in 1995 to founding SiteLogic and helping shape the SEO industry through his work with the OMCP (Online Marketing Certified Professional Organization).

This conversation explores the evergreen principles that have survived every "SEO is dead" cycle, the critical gaps in SEO education, and why AI is both a productivity tool and a source of strategic confusion for businesses. Matt and Jeremy discuss the importance of conversion optimization, the holistic webmaster approach that got lost in the 2010-2020 era of easy Google traffic, and why understanding content, context, and community remains fundamental to digital marketing success.

Key Topics Covered:

• Why newspaper layout principles from 1995 still drive SEO success today
• The 18-24 month shelf life of SEO educational content
• Enterprise red tape horror stories (drug tests for editing 10 pages!)
• Why LLMs are "like pre-Google search" and the shiny object syndrome around AI
• The seven strategic questions every business needs to answer before tactics
• How to remove friction down the funnel and leverage your website correctly
• Why social traffic behavior differs dramatically from search and blog referrals

Guest

Matt Bailey

• Founder & CEO, SiteLogic Marketing
• 30+ years in digital marketing (since 1995)
• OMCP contributor and instructional design expert
• Former Microsoft Worldwide Education consultant
• Website: sitelogic.com
• Learning Platform: learn.sitelogic.com
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/mattbaileysitelogic

Extended Recap

The Origin Story: From Journalism to Pre-Google SEO

Matt Bailey's journey into digital marketing began in an unexpected place—journalism school. While he quickly realized journalism wasn't his calling, the education gave him something invaluable: an understanding of how to lay out content for quick consumption. Headlines, subheadings, bullet points—these newspaper design principles became the foundation of his website development approach in 1995-96.

Working in real estate at the time, Matt started building websites as electronic versions of printed pages. What he didn't realize initially was that the markup he was using for visual layout was exactly what early search engines needed. This was the AltaVista era, where SEOs would spend entire nights resubmitting pages to chase rankings.

When Google arrived, Matt's content-first approach paid immediate dividends. Pages structured with clear hierarchy and reader-focused design performed well naturally. This early lesson—that optimizing for visitors and optimizing for search engines aren't separate goals—would become a through-line in his entire career.

The Analytics Awakening

A pivotal moment came when Matt was working on real estate websites and asked himself: "What can I do on the website that will have the biggest impact?" He didn't have an answer. That question forced him to learn analytics, starting with Web Trends (anyone who's worked with Web Trends knows the pain of the day-long setup-and-pray cycle).

Learning analytics transformed how Matt approached B2B lead generation. It wasn't just about getting traffic anymore—it was about understanding user behavior, measuring engagement, and connecting digital activity to business outcomes. This analytical mindset would distinguish his work throughout his agency years.

Building SEO Departments and Breaking Free

Throughout the late '90s and early 2000s, Matt moved through multiple ad agencies in the Midwest, where B2B industrial and B2B services dominated the landscape. At two different agencies, he built entire SEO and digital marketing departments from scratch. But after doing this twice for other people, he had the realization many agency professionals eventually reach: "I think I can do this for myself."

In 2006, Matt founded SiteLogic as a client services company focused specifically on website marketing, auditing, and promotion—deliberately avoiding the development side to maintain focus on their sweet spot.

The Training Pivot and OMCP Contributions

Around 2015-2016, Matt faced a crossroads. He had developed a parallel business of teaching and training, working with direct marketing associations, travel associations, and automotive associations. He was traveling constantly, speaking to industry audiences about digital marketing tactics and strategy. The demands of running both an agency and a training business forced a choice.

Matt chose training, transforming SiteLogic into a training company. During this period, he also contributed significantly to the OMCP (Online Marketing Certified Professional Organization), helping define what makes an SEO professional. What does an SEO need to know? What are the core competencies? How do you test for those skills? These weren't just academic questions—they shaped how the industry thinks about professional development.

His commitment to education went even deeper: Matt went back to school for a degree in instructional design to understand how to teach 30 years of digital marketing according to educational pedagogy. He's currently working on his master's degree in digital marketing to teach at the undergraduate level.

The Education Problem: Textbooks and the Metaverse

Jeremy brought up a problem he's encountered working with universities in Nashville through colleagues Ross Jones and Michael McDougald of Right Thing SEO Agency: university SEO programs are typically eight years behind current practice.

Matt confirmed this isn't unique to SEO. When creating training materials for organizations like LinkedIn, Simply Learn, Udemy, and Udacity, he's upfront about reality: SEO course content has a shelf life of 18-24 months maximum. LinkedIn does regular updates, but many educational providers have content that's 10-15 years old still on the market.

The problem runs deeper in traditional academia. Matt shared teaching an undergraduate marketing class last semester where the textbook—only 18 months old—had an entire chapter on how the metaverse would change marketing. Already obsolete. Even worse, the textbook authors were all PhDs who had never held actual marketing jobs. They'd consulted, but had never dealt with the politics of getting ideas approved internally, never had to compromise because IT wouldn't support their vision, never had to play the real-world game.

This disconnect between academic theory and practical implementation affects not just SEO but many marketing disciplines. Academia is starting to ask the right questions, but structural barriers remain.

Enterprise Red Tape: The HCA Horror Story

Jeremy shared a personal enterprise red tape nightmare: editing 10 pages for HCA as a subcontractor of a subcontractor of an agency required a drug test, three separate sign-ons, using only their laptop, and sitting in a room with a security guard to ensure he didn't abscond with their secured device.

Matt's response: "It's absolutely insane." But both agreed this is the reality of enterprise SEO work, echoing McDougald's observation that "the most expensive thing in SEO is red tape."

The Evergreen Principles: What Never Changes

Jeremy posed the critical question: From 1995 to now, through every "SEO is dead" cycle (mobile-first, voice search, HCU, and inevitably whatever comes next), what are the through lines that remain true?

Matt's answer cuts to the heart of why he's never liked the term "SEO":

"Search engine optimization" implies you only care about the search engine. What are you really optimizing? Ideally, you're optimizing for visitors, for conversion, for engagement. These visitor-centered principles are what's evergreen.

Matt goes back to his origin story: building websites like newspaper pages. Layout, readability, content—that's never changed. Yes, there were tactical experiments—doorway pages, black hat techniques for affiliate and Forex clients. But Matt's B2B lead generation clients couldn't take those risks. His approach was content, PR, and building links with associated businesses. Those skills are evergreen.

Critically, Matt emphasized: "After learning SEO, if you're not learning conversion optimization, you've lost the game." That's where you maximize your efforts.

When people say "SEO is dead," Matt interprets that as "the old tactics are dead." But writing engaging content that reaches visitors, answers questions, and converts customers? Those skills never die.

The Holistic Webmaster Approach: Lost in the 2010-2020 Comfort Zone

Jeremy and Matt Brooks at SEOteric frequently discuss a critical blindness in the industry: what you do with traffic after it arrives is as important as how you got it there.

But somewhere along the way, organizations siloed everything: social media managers handle social traffic, PPC teams manage paid landing pages, SEO controls the blog, brand managers own certain sections. This fragmentation misses massive opportunities.

Jeremy's call to action: "Let's go back to 1998 and reestablish ourselves as webmasters." Look at this holistically. Email sends lead to branded search. Organic social leads to website traffic, which leads to newsletter conversions, which leads to email traffic that still needs converting. These channels aren't isolated—they're interconnected.

The problem emerged during the 2010-2020 comfort zone when Google traffic was so abundant that SEOs could operate in isolation. They didn't need to talk to the email team, the PPC team, or the social media team. Just publish blog posts, build backlinks, and claim credit for all traffic—even when $20,000 in radio and video ads drove massive brand search volume.

Why was ignoring brand traffic ever acceptable? It's the singular signal of market awareness of your business and industry. But because SEOs couldn't control it through blog posts alone, many pretended it didn't matter. That was madness.

Matt confirmed this holistic understanding actually gives SEOs an advantage: OMCP job delineation studies show SEOs have more of a track toward management and leadership than other disciplines precisely because they have their fingers in multiple areas. They understand integration, measurement, and how channels work together.

Specialization vs. Multi-Discipline: The Agency Advantage

Jeremy asked whether significant differences exist between verticals—e-commerce vs. B2B lead generation—and whether SEOs should be multi-disciplinary.

Matt loves this question because it highlights what made agency work so valuable. Having multiple client types exposed him to different requirements: e-commerce needs additional UX/UI skills and database understanding; B2B lead generation has different conversion paths; publishing and affiliate work each have unique demands.

Being able to say "I've worked in B2B lead gen, e-commerce, publishing, and affiliate" opens doors. That breadth of experience enables bouncing between industries—travel, automotive, advertising, brand work—with relative ease. The agency experience provides that exposure early in a career.

The AI Elephant: Three Reddit Threads of Lost SEO Jobs

Jeremy brought up the anxiety in every SEO's mind: CEOs declaring "AI, ChatGPT, we need GEO, we need AI SEO, we don't need an SEO budget anymore." He'd seen three different Reddit threads where SEOs lost their jobs because executives determined SEO was obsolete—instead, they needed to "make content and get articles placed so LLM bots can find mentions and links."

The irony isn't lost on either of them.

Matt's response is direct: "SEO works. It still works. In fact, SEO works on LLMs." They look at the same signals, and honestly, LLMs are like early search engines—almost like pre-Google search right now.

He's amazed by companies jumping on tracking "visibility in LLMs" when even two people using ChatGPT with the same prompt get different answers. How do you track that? How do you measure prompt variations across millions of users? We're back to rank checking, which is fundamentally flawed.

Matt's diagnosis: "It's a lot of shiny objects right now. A ton of shiny objects."

The Strategy Problem: No CRM, But Let's Do AI!

Basic, well-done SEO still works. But it must be combined with good marketing dependent on clear strategy.

Most businesses Matt consults with that are enthralled by AI share a common problem: they don't have a clear strategy. They don't understand what they're trying to accomplish, how they'll accomplish it, or what process they'll use.

One company wanted AI to generate leads and content but didn't even have a CRM in place. No backend process to handle what the frontend would generate. This thinking makes shiny objects take off.

We've seen this pattern before: metaverse, NFTs, big data. Everyone thinks the new thing will save their business. If you don't have clear strategy driving your marketing decisions, you're going to lose.

The AI downside? Losses will take longer to realize. Companies firing people because "AI can write articles" won't see the impact immediately. But it's coming.

The AI Slop Problem: 90% AI-Generated Blogs

Matt looked at a site recently where 90% of blog content was AI-generated. You don't need to be a high-level AI user to spot it—just look at the pages. And the blog doesn't perform well. It's generic, average content.

AI can't create something truly new. You can feed it information, create custom GPTs, and those help. But if you're just using AI to pump out content volume, you're creating slop.

If you want strategic approach, branding, audience engagement, and conversion with all the backend operations required—you need people to manage that. AI can't do that effectively yet, and Matt doesn't think we'll see it soon.

Conversion: The Seven Strategic Questions

Jeremy asked about what AI and LLMs definitively can't do: make site edits that positively impact conversion rate.

Matt starts every client conversation with seven strategic questions before touching tactics:

1. Who are you? (brand identity, personality, tone)
2. What's your objective?

These two questions are the client's responsibility. Only then can Matt do the research:

3. Who's the audience?
4. Who are our different audience segments?
5. Do we need to modify messaging per segment?
6. Do we need to reach audiences differently?
7. How do we measure success?

The problem? Most marketers and SEOs immediately jump to tactics: which social media, posting frequency, posting times. They skip the foundational conversation about audiences, needs, location, message quality, competitive differentiation, and communication effectiveness.

Those foundations aren't things LLMs excel at. It requires planning, framework development, then execution.

The Microsoft Example: What SMBs Really Want

Matt worked with Microsoft Worldwide Education for five years, going to different offices and working with marketing and operations teams. A common scenario: asking "Who's your target customer?" for selling Microsoft Office to small business owners.

Invariably, the myopia would take over: "They need a full-service suite that integrates all their content..." They'd describe Word, Excel, cloud storage—product features.

Matt would stop them: "That's not what small to medium business owners want. They want to make payroll. They want to be more efficient and spend less time at the office. They want their people to accomplish more."

Until you change your language to those needs, they'll dismiss you. It's about fitting the product to the need, not hammering prospects with product attributes expecting them to make the connection themselves.

The "Enterprise Solutions" Problem

How often is "enterprise solutions" overused in SEO? It's a nonsense phrase that means nothing.

Matt's grandmother would say: "You have got to change your language." It doesn't resonate with your audience. You're not meeting their need. You're hammering your brand attributes expecting them to see the connection—and they don't.

The "Which Is Your Copy?" Test

Jeremy has done audits where he copies homepage text from the client and a competitor (or even a totally different industry) and asks: "Which is your copy?"

"You excel at customer service" but so does everyone else. One does restaurant rebrands, another is an industrial carpenter. Your pretty-sounding sales phrases mean nothing to readers, to SEOs, and to LLMs.

One of Jeremy's previous interviewees observed: "ChatGPT is your least trained customer service representative." For them, for SEO, and for your readers, you need to examine what your content actually does to support your business.

Removing Friction Down the Funnel

Are you providing sample shop drawings for precast walls that construction teams need for RFPs to counties? No? They need those to get bids. If you're not providing them, you're forcing them to create their own—or they'll go to a competitor who provides that resource.

If you're not thinking about friction down the funnel that prevents sales, you're not leveraging your website correctly.

That's what it's really about: you have a fantastic tool where clients and potential clients can get information without mailing books or requiring one-on-one conversations. It's an incredible opportunity.

That's why digital marketing budgets increase by billions of dollars every year. A huge portion will always be SEO spend, but it should be considered part of your marketing strategy: How do we use this tool to its best capability?

The Positive Side of AI: Better Questions, Better Content

Matt sees AI having positive effects: some content is being written so much better, much more in-depth, answering real questions.

When SEOs publish "here's the template that works," Matt thinks: that template is 20 years old. It's about depth, question-answering, and being found for questions people are actually asking.

If you haven't been researching those questions for 20 years, welcome to the party—AI is helping you understand questions better.

AI as a Thousand Interns

Jeremy's "least trained customer service rep" metaphor resonates, but Matt reframes it: "AI is like having a thousand interns."

They work fast, but you still need someone to refine edges, clarify, improve writing, and finalize it.

Matt's team recently rewrote all content for a site because it was too thin. They used AI, but 30% of the project was keyword research—not just finding ranking keywords, but understanding: What are people asking? How do they formulate questions? What words do they use? How do you organize what people want and translate that into answers?

Then develop that in the brand's tone and personality, highlighting distinctive characteristics. Instead of saying "we have great customer service," define what that means. How does your customer service work? Why do people like it? List specifics.

Generalities don't work. But when you define specifics? It works great in AI and it works great in Google.

Key Quotes

On the term "SEO":

"I have never liked the term SEO, search engine optimization, because what are you truly optimizing? Ideally, you're optimizing for visitors, you're optimizing for their conversion, you are optimizing for their engagement."

On evergreen skills:

"I built websites as if I was creating a newspaper page. The layout, the readability, the content, that's never changed."

On conversion optimization:

"After learning SEO, if you're not learning conversion optimization, you've lost the game because that's where you really maximize what you've done."

On AI and LLMs:

"SEO works. It still works. In fact, SEO works on LLMs. They look at the same things and honestly, LLMs are like early search engines. It's almost like pre-Google search right now."

On strategy vs. tactics:

"If you don't have clear strategy that drives your marketing and your marketing decisions, you're going to lose."

On understanding customer needs:

"That's not what a small to medium sized business owner wants. What they want is to make payroll. They want to be more efficient and spend less time at the office. They want their people to be able to accomplish more."

On AI's role:

"AI is like having a thousand interns. They could do it speedy, but it still required someone to knock off the edges, clarify, add some better writing and get it there."

Resources Mentioned

Tools & Platforms:

• Web Trends (analytics, early 2000s)
• AltaVista (pre-Google search engine)
• ChatGPT / LLMs

Organizations:

• OMCP (Online Marketing Certified Professional Organization)
• Market Motive
• LinkedIn Learning
• Simply Learn
• Udemy
• Udacity

Companies/Case Studies:

• Microsoft Worldwide Education
• HCA Healthcare (enterprise red tape example)

Connect with Matt Bailey

Website: sitelogic.com
Learning Platform: learn.sitelogic.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/mattbaileysitelogic

Matt's Coached Courses

Matt offers hands-on coached courses (limited to 5 students per cohort) covering:

• Content marketing
• SEO analytics
• How to present analytics
• Customer research
• In-depth keyword research
• Market research

These courses include personal coaching, hands-on assignments, real-world activities from agency work, and portfolio development.

Connect with Jeremy Rivera

Website: jeremyriveraseo.com
SEO Arcade: seoarcade.com
Podcast: unscriptedseo.com

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