Scaling SEO in the Age of AI with Matt Diamante | From Garage Band to HeyTony

I thought I was prepared. I had the research. I had the “AI-verified” facts. I opened the recording with a confident intro about Matt Diamante’s early days in a band called Little Tyrant.

Matt looked at me, smiled, and said: “Great name. Never heard of it. My band was actually called Shortcut to Last.”

It was a classic AI hallucination. But as we kept talking, we realized that Shortcut to Last is the most ironically perfect name for a guest whose entire career has been about the exact opposite: The Long Game.

Today, Matt is a significant force in the SEO world. As the founder of HeyTony, he leads a 15-person team, and his “no-fluff” approach has built a massive community of over 350,000 followers on Instagram who turn to him to demystify the search engine. Despite the big numbers and the heavyweight reputation, Matt remains incredibly modest—a creative at heart who just happens to have cracked the code on how to get found.

In addition to the journey and Matt’s unique story, we took the opportunity to go deep and explore a red hot flipped market – the world of SEO.

So yes, we covered a ton. If you are looking for a great story, spending time with an amazing person (I’m talking about Matt!) or if you are a marketing geek looking to scratch an itch – this episode checks all the boxes. And yes, this one was a ton of fun!

Act 1: The Creative Hustle (From the Band to the Van to the Film Truck)

Matt didn’t start HeyTony because he loved spreadsheets; he started it because his band needed a crowd. He enrolled in advertising school as a “business move” to prove to his parents he could market his music.

But the path wasn’t linear. Before he was an agency founder, he was driving trucks on film sets for indie horror movies, hotspotting his laptop between takes to build SEO sites. The “Flip” happened when he realized the instability of the truck driving life was actually the safety net he needed to cut. He chose the “Driver’s Seat” of his own business over the driver’s seat of someone else’s production. This type of pre-flip entry point seems to happen often!

Act 2: The Messy Middle (The HeyTony Era)

Scaling an agency from a solo-hustle in a truck cab to a 15-person powerhouse requires something Matt calls Native Empathy. He isn’t selling jargon; he’s selling a solution to a problem he lived. In this segment, we explore how Matt moved from “doing the work” to “building the system,” all while stripping the “magic” and “wizardry” out of SEO to make it accessible for the everyday entrepreneur.

One element that I really appreciated about Matt’s story was his realization that despite having a seemingly successful SEO business, he had a yearning to get back to his technical SEO roots, so, he developed his business to do exactly that, coaching his team to take on greater responsibility and developing his talented to work in the business while he worked on it!

Act 3: The Flipped Market (SEO is a Utility)

In our “Marketing Geek” segment, we dive into the current chaos of AI and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization). Matt’s take? SEO is like heating and cooling. It’s a utility. You have a problem; you need a solution.

While the industry is panicking over AI hallucinations (like my intro!), Matt is leaning in. We discuss why he doesn’t use the word “GEO” on his site and why “Information Gain”—adding something actually new to the internet—is the only way to remain findable when the machines start talking to each other.