---
title: 'Cold Outreach SEO Agency: Interview with Mico Martinez'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=CXUvC5KdEUk'
video_id: 'CXUvC5KdEUk'
date: 2026-07-28
duration_sec: 937
---

# Cold Outreach SEO Agency: Interview with Mico Martinez

> Source: [Cold Outreach SEO Agency: Interview with Mico Martinez](https://youtube.com/watch?v=CXUvC5KdEUk)

## Summary

In this interview, Mico Martinez shares his journey from black hat SEO to running a successful Shopify SEO agency. He discusses his team in the Philippines, effective client acquisition through cold email, technical SEO strategies for Shopify, and the impact of recent algorithm updates on e-commerce sites.

### Key Points

- **Background and Black Hat Start** [00:03] — Mico started SEO in 2018 with a black hat mass page strategy using Ser Shaker and spun content for longtail keywords.
- **Learning from Experts** [03:47] — He learned from Matt Diggity, Kyle Roof, and others, implementing their techniques without extensive testing.
- **Team and Location Advantage** [04:43] — Based in the Philippines with a 20-person team, allowing cost-effective scaling and travel flexibility.
- **Client Acquisition via Cold Email** [07:08] — 90% of clients come from cold email using Instantly, sending thousands of emails daily, similar to link outreach.
- **Shopify SEO Prioritization** [09:00] — Collection and product pages generate 80%+ of revenue, but blog content supports ranking and additional revenue.
- **Technical Shopify SEO** [10:47] — Address common issues like internal product link URLs by editing the theme, using breadcrumbs, and canonical tags.
- **Link Building Strategy** [12:38] — 70-80% of backlinks come from guest posts and link insertions via mass outreach, averaging $75 per link.
- **Algorithm Update Impact** [13:33] — Niche sites were hit hard by updates (half lost traffic), but e-commerce Shopify sites remained stable.

### Conclusion

Mico emphasizes the importance of diversifying income and focusing on e-commerce SEO, which has proven resilient to algorithm changes. Cold email remains his primary client acquisition channel.

## Transcript

Facebook and it was about building these Mass page websites using Sur Shaker you Mass page websites using Sur Shaker you run a Shopify agency you do nich sites you do experiment sit you do a programmatic sites you're also doing
your own branding and Twitter and YouTube and Linkedin and all sorts of sending thousands of emails a day that's method right now it's it's pretty obvious that the the collection and
least 80% of the revenue on these e-commerce websites right when you're doing uh the shop FR year as well how are you approaching technical SEO on that c what kind of strategy do you use when it com to have you seen much impact
from Alm volatility because the the algor updates over the last two years algor updates over the last two years have been a bit of a e-commerce sites specifically have just been rocking yet with the AR from what I can tell at
least like my nich SES have been rocked like over half of them got smashed by an ago update I think a year and a half [Music]
episode of these interviews on my YouTube channel and I am joined today by a guy who has been an awesome SEO that I've been following for quite a while on Twitter he has been running a Shopify e-commerce SEO agency as well as has
been running a ton of different types of experiments around programmatic SEO Niche sites AI content and all sorts of good stuff it's been really interesting following him so welcome to the show Mo Martinez ladies and gentlemen hey
Charles thanks for having me um excited to be here this is my first ever interview of this sort so uh take it easy on me and I'll do my best to answer worries we'll just kind of jump into things slowly then with uh kind of how
did you get started with SEO sure that's actually an interesting story I started actually an interesting story I started in 2018 and it was actually like a doing in 2018 and it was actually like a doing a black hat SEO strategy I found this
random $500 course on Facebook and it was about building these Mass page websites using Ser shaker like it it involved like uh just grabbing all the
longtail keywords for a certain brand and using Ser Shaker to basically publish pages for each of these longtail keywords with spun content and because
longtail keywords were super low uh we would end up ranking for these random longtail keywords and then we would monetize with affiliate um but uh I knew that that strategy wasn't good long term so I decided to you know uh invest in
learning more about like real SEO and that's how I found Matt digity that's how I found the authority hacker guy guys I went to the changai SEO conference in I think that was 2019 and then that's when I you know
2019 and then that's when I you know found you Kyle roof and all these other that's really when I started building some Niche sites and that's when I started like uh building my own sites scaling them to five
scaling them to five figures um and yeah I think the rest is learning from you guys I never really had to do my own SEO tests um all I did had to do my own SEO tests um all I did was follow you guys you K Matt you know
Robert and just learn from what you guys are saying online I never had to do the tests myself all I had to do is implementation and that's worked pretty well for me so far um despite all the algorithm changes and things like that
um always seemed to find a way to you know make SEO work for me and and today I'm running an Shopify SEO agency and doing a little bit of programmatic SEO that that's really just like a side
project it's just for fun and it's pretty similar to what I was doing in the start except it's just crazier now with AI and you know the access to all the technology we have today so yeah that's basically the last five years for
that's basically the last five years for me yeah so you kind of just uh said all wanted to get onto my next question which was you run a Shopify agency you which was you run a Shopify agency you do nich sites you do experiments you do
a programmatic sites you're also doing your own branding and Twitter and YouTube and Linkedin and all sorts of stuff where do you split your time how do you find all this time and what kind of does your normal week look like yeah
so I think the reason I can do all of these things is number one I'm learning most of this from like people like you so I don't have to do the research myself I don't have to do all the testing myself so that helps a lot and
number two I have I'm I'm Filipino you know and I'm based in the Philippines so I have a huge team behind me actually helping me do all these things and it's very cost effective like we're I think there's 20 people at least 20 people on
doing all these things um so I don't actually have really long days uh to be honest uh it really depends I think it comes in Cycles like when I'm in the Philippines I do like grind and work like eight hour days but um for over
half of the year I'm actually traveling and that's when I'm not working like these longer days I'm spending my time uh you know experiencing life right and now for a quick message from our sponsor search intelligence if you're looking
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searched for journalists that consistently write about sleep and well-being we've sent these journalist to advice provided by the client and within one day the links started flowing in Glamour magazine a dr81 website
picked it up Huffington Post Dr 88 mirror UK dr90 a massive Avalanche of links blasted through our client's website with this simple yet effective campaign about how to sleep on your back I hope this inspires and I hope you'll
I hope this inspires and I hope you'll use this technique to land massive links to your or your clients website yeah 100% well that's that sounds awesome to be fair considering that I sit by myself in my house for
that I sit by myself in my house for like 13 hours a day that's insane that's I know how you do that a lot better life than you have man um so onto my next question what have been your most successful method for generating
said as well you're in the Philippines but you're generally going to be working with more Western Brands and stuff right especially kind of shop clients and successful methods for generating those clients and leads especially kind of in
the earlier days sure yeah it was actually like quite the struggle when we first launched the Shopify SEO agency like my expertise is in SEO so we had to like my expertise is in SEO so we had to learn about client acquisition sales and
all that agency stuff and then for the first I think six months we didn't land a single client so it was quite a struggle but now most of our clients are actually through cold email which is I don't know if that's surprising but
we're using the same or similar Outreach methods we used to get backlinks right we're using instantly we're sending thousands of emails a day and and that's our most successful client acquisition method right now on top of that
obviously um we're pretty active on uh social media specifically Twitter and we're starting to run some Instagram ads and then building out some Instagram ads and then building out an Instagram profile but like 90% of our
clients come from cold email right now damn that's actually pretty interesting agencies that are doing that do you know Daniel Fazio the blackout wizard guy no not from oh okay okay so he's like the cold Outreach wizard guy at the been
he runs something called client ascenstion and it's basically a okay yeah yeah yeah I know him I know him now yeah I've seen him on Twitter yeah I've known him for a few years and stuff he's a cool guy um but I just thought that
very similar system to what he was basically putting out Rec yeah probably is yeah yeah um so in when you're kind of doing the actual SEO for these Shopify and e-commerce Brands which pages are you prioritizing for
optimization because a lot of people um when they're doing e-commerce SEO they'll only focus on category pages and their homepage they won't put much thought into you know all the eat stuff or your uh blog content or your you know
pages you know unique descriptions and things like that what what kind of uh when you're prioritizing optimization yeah so like it's it's pretty obvious
that the the collection and product pages are going to generate at least 80% % of the revenue on these e-commerce websites right but I think people seem to overlook the the power of uh supporting blog content like uh so we
blog content because we can we have a huge team of writers we actually had a huge team of writers we actually had a uh SEO content writing agency a few years back so we have the resources to create all this content and we do write
a lot of blog posts because we' found that it does help r R the collection and product pages so number one it helps rank the collection and product pages rank the collection and product pages and number two um It actually drives
additional Revenue as well um you can build out an email list you can nurture these people that end up on a blog post to eventually buy uh one of your products so yeah I wouldn't say we prioritize the collection in product
pages they do generate significantly you know majority of the revenue but blog posts are really important to have as well yeah 100% you kind of have to have the entire like holistic approach which
the entire like holistic approach which is what cor yeah exactly exactly 100% okay so when you're doing uh the shop for SEO as well from a technical perspective because it's quite a limited platform how are you approaching
technical SEO on that CMS yeah so we do have like a we we have a checklists already of the things we always look out for because out of the box Shopify does have some uh let's say technical issues built into
uh let's say technical issues built into it but they're not issues we can't uh it but they're not issues we can't uh overcome by simply just editing the the theme behind it right like the most common one is how the internal product
common one is how the internal product link URLs are built um if you see them collection page so you can have the same product on different collection pages and they would have different internal links because of how Shopify is built
to remove the collection page and they have and then eventually have the same product page linked so things like that really um in the end like if you can really um in the end like if you can just uh edit the theme um use some meta
fields to create the bread crumbs and then create canonical then you can really um there's no problem using Shopify for SEO in my opinion yeah it's it's pretty straightforward kind of you in fact one of the other things I want
to talk to you about in terms of Shopify is are there any specific apps or tools platform because I know I know that's one of the questions I always get asked what Plugin or app you use for Shopify SEO yeah so we don't really use any of
the apps um we use like one app to do like bulk edits like bulk edits for uh product pages that need need to be edited but other than that we don't really use any other apps wow okay interesting do you use any SEO tools
that people Maybe not maybe haven't heard of or is it all just internal Manpower no just internal Manpower I mean like we like that but those I think those are like just fundamental uh SEO tools
nothing Shopify SEO specific no yeah 100% that makes sense do you build uh 100% that makes sense do you build uh links for your clients yeah yes we do what kind of strategy do you use when it comes to building links yeah so 70 to
80% of our back links are actually guest posts and Link insertions so it's just a mass Outreach really so you're just using the same Outreach system for the same exactly yeah overlapping and kind of intertwined systems Mak easier to
of intertwined systems Mak easier to manage as well right exactly what kind sending like thousands and thousands of emails a day using instantly what kind you know on average um I think the average is like
75 bucks okay that's pretty interesting for like a what dr30 40 something like that yeah yeah okay that makes sense okay um have you seen much impact from algorithm volatility because the the algorithm updates over the last two
years have been a bit of a mess to say the least and there've been a lot of complaints that being said eCommerce sites specifically have just been rocking it with the AR upd from what I can tell at least um so have you seen
downward Trend what what kind of M have you seen from AR up so um based on my experience like my Niche sites have been rocked like over half of them got smashed by an algo update I think a year and a half ago and that's really what
and a half ago and that's really what inspired me or or wanted me to build the Shopify SEO agency basically to um diversify and protect my income right um on the you know Ecommerce SEO end we haven't seen the algo updates affect
them at all like they're just stable throughout the algo updates and and that's why we really want to push um for more uh Shopify SEO growth in our portfolio did you um recover the KN sites or did you sell them or no some of
them just we just let them slowly die out and then the ones that were still like you know that were weren't affected by the algo update we still work on them but the ones that were smashed we just let them die out um try to monetize them
as much as possible but we just didn't see a good Roi on our time trying to then nothing we did was really wor working and or it would work and then it would just fall back and we're like okay this is uh this is a waste of our time
let's just focus on something else yeah it it makes total sense well I appreciate you uh coming on and and having the discussions and things I hope is there anywhere anybody can find you online yeah um uh you can find me on
Twitter I'm most active there I think it's moo Martinez and my CEO Martinez um I post a lot of random stuff on there I'm trying to build an audience there so well thank you for having me and I'll see you in the next episode
see you in the next episode Peace thanks Charles have a good one