We have great news! Matt Diggity from Diggitymarketing.com, well-known SEO and Digital Marketing specialist shared his knowledge with Sitechecker team. We prepared a list of interesting questions related to Matt’s own SEO experience and career. Founder of Chiang Mai SEO Conference highly demanded among SEO experts and webmasters, answered on the most interesting questions our readers would like to know. To know more about his projects, follow him on Twitter of Matt Diggity.
So let’s start! Spread your knowledge about SEO with Sitechecker and Matt Diggity:
1. How many years of experience in digital marketing do you have?
I started in 2009 with SEO for affiliate websites. Although, in my former jobby-job I did dabble in general marketing as well. In 2014 I founded Diggity Marketing, my brand.
2. What type of digital marketing you have the strongest skills?
Definitely SEO. I’m a journeyman at other modalities like paid ads, email marketing, etc. But SEO is my strong suit.
3. What projects you have launched are you proud of?
#1 is definitely the Chiang Mai SEO Conference. Namely, because of all the projects I work on, this one is the most difficult and simultaneously the most rewarding. It’s definitely not the most profitable though, so my protip is not to get into the conference game if you’re trying to make some money. 🙂
To further your own SEO knowledge and skills you need testing 100%. At a certain point, you’re not going to learn much more from reading blogs. You need to get your hands dirty and start to experiment with new methods.
Matt Diggity, Chiang Mai SEO Conference founder
To add, I’m also extremely proud of my businesses Authority Builders (my outreach backlink service), LeadSpring (my affiliate marketing agency), and The Search Initiative (my client-facing agency).
All are flourishing, not only from a numbers perspective but culturally what we’ve built is something special.
4. What do you do to further your own SEO knowledge and skills?
Testing 100%. At a certain point, you’re not going to learn much more from reading blogs. You need to get your hands dirty and start to experiment with new methods. At any given time I’m testing 4-5 completely novel concepts, whether they be related to onsite SEO or offsite.
5. Is there any marketing or SEO blog you like the most and why?
It varies from time to time. Ahrefs has been consistently pushing out great content recently though.
6. What are the TOP-3 errors you made at the beginning of your SEO specialist career?
- Taking things for granted. At one point I got lazy and started implementing SEO advice without testing it. I got burnt by Penguin 2.0 because of this.
- Not getting some formal management training earlier.
- Not going fast enough. If I could do it again, I would have been more aggressive.
7. Has your website ever been affected by Google’s search results ranking algorithm? If yes, what was this Google Algorithm and what recommendations can you give to sort out such situations.
As mentioned above, I got hit by Penguin 2.0 in 2013 for sending spammy software-generated links directly to my sites. I highly doubt anyone is using techniques like that these days, but in case you are… you’re playing with fire.
Don’t waste your crawl budget with tons of unimportant indexed pages. Watch your crawl depth as well.
Matt Diggity, Authority Builders
8. What website performance items should always be tackled when it comes to Google’s recommendations?
Speed, all the way. And definitely crawlability. Don’t waste your crawl budget with tons of unimportant indexed pages. Watch your crawl depth as well.
9. Do you believe that backlinks are Google’s past? Is link building important for increasing the website’s positions nowadays?
Links are absolutely still relevant. Although, the name of the game has shifted to quality over quantity even further.
10. As we know, you are a part of Authority Builders team. What have made a real impact on you in this story to become their partner?
I was using the service for nearly a year as my secret weapon for link building. I was getting consistent results from white hat links, which typically doesn’t have a strong, pronounced impact. Turns out, that by focusing on quality and getting links from sites that rank themselves, it was making a big difference on the trust an authority for my sites. I was so impressed by their model, I decided to partner up and become a co-director.
11. Are you going to surprise SEO and Digital Marketing world with something new (tool/app, course, product)?
There’s always something cookin’ in the oven. But now’s not the time to release any spoilers.
12. In your opinion, does the technical health of the website effect on rankings in search engines?
Absolutely. Google rewards you when you make its life easier.
13. What is your checklist when doing website audit?
Oh boy… where do we start?
- Technical basics (404s, 301 chains, etc)
- Onsite SEO (keyword cannibalization, thin content, optimization problems, TFIDF, etc)
- Offsite SEO (link toxicity, black-sheeping, anchor text issues, etc)
Honestly, this question could be its own blog post.
14. What is your approach to developing an SEO strategy?
It always boils down to looking at what the other sites on page 1 are doing, and what’s the gap between what I’m doing vs them.
Google is going to get smarter with machine learning and potentially mild-to-medium forms of AI. But it’s also very likely that consumer SEO software will improve as well. Ultimately I believe that content is going to grow stronger and stronger as a dominant ranking factor.
Matt Diggity, Authority Builders
15. What services/companies/apps have inspired you the most this year?
Surfer SEO. That company has just recently come on the map and their speed to penetrate the market, and continuously develop their tool is amazing.
16. How do you see the future of SEO (in 5 years)?
Google is going to get smarter with machine learning and potentially mild-to-medium forms of AI. But it’s also very likely that consumer SEO software will improve as well. Ultimately I believe that content is going to grow stronger and stronger as a dominant ranking factor.
17. Which SEO or marketing tools can you recommend as a must-have for every SEO specialist?
Ahrefs, Surfer SEO.
18. How and where to learn a newbie in SEO? What advice would you give to an aspiring specialist?
Find a mentor, apply at an agency, or take a course. Learning SEO by yourself is possible, for sure. But things move so fast. You could end up finally grasping one concept, but in the process, it’s changed and 4 new relevant concepts have popped up. Getting some help will shortcut the learning curve.
