In this episode of the Unscripted SEO Podcast by Be Sharp Digital Marketing, 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 <s