I’m Matthis Duarte — SEO manager, data nerd, and founder of HackingStory
I’ve spent the last 12 years figuring out how search engines think. Not in theory — in production, on real sites, for real brands with real traffic at stake.
I’m currently SEO Manager, EMEA at GoDaddy, where I optimize search strategy across one of the world’s largest web platforms. Before that I spent years in the trenches as an SEO consultant and specialist — working with brands like Rent A Car, Europe Assistance, Klorane, René Furterer, Puressentiel, Hawkers, and Argus Group, across agencies and in-house teams in Paris and Barcelona.
What I actually do
My approach to SEO has always been technical first. I believe most visibility problems are architecture problems in disguise — the wrong signals sent to the wrong crawlers, at the wrong depth, with the wrong internal linking logic. I’ve spent years solving exactly those problems: log file analysis, JavaScript rendering issues, hreflang implementations, crawl budget optimization, Core Web Vitals, site migrations. The unsexy stuff that moves the needle.
The other half is content and semantic strategy — keyword research, topical authority, marketing personas, content architecture. I’ve run workshops on this for clients ranging from cosmetics labs to insurance groups.
More recently I’ve become obsessed with a newer problem: how brands appear — or don’t — inside AI systems like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. I’ve personally tracked over 7,000 brand mentions across AI platforms, analyzed 50+ companies per industry, and published some of the first structured research on AI brand visibility. It’s where SEO is heading, and most brands are completely unprepared for it.
Why I built HackingStory
I got tired of SEO content that was either too basic to be useful or too theoretical to be actionable. HackingStory is the site I wanted when I was starting out — deep, data-driven, practitioner-led, with no filler.
It’s also where I share what I’m learning about AI visibility in real time. The landscape is changing fast. The brands that figure this out now will have a meaningful advantage in 18 months. I want to help ambitious founders and growth teams be in that group.
A bit more about me
I’m French, based in Valencia, Spain, and I studied geopolitics at Paris Panthéon-Sorbonne before ending up in SEO — which made more sense than it sounds. I’m self-taught in Python and use it regularly to automate analysis and build SEO scripts, though I’d call myself an enthusiast more than a developer.
Outside of work I play chess competitively — including international tournaments — and spend a lot of time studying the game. There’s more overlap between chess and SEO strategy than most people would expect: both reward deep preparation, pattern recognition, and thinking several moves ahead.
Work with me
HackingStory is the media side. The consulting side is a boutique SEO and AI visibility service — one to two clients at a time, senior-led from day one, no account managers or junior handoffs. If you’re a growth-stage brand looking to build durable organic visibility across both Google and AI search, get in touch.