Andrew Mazzonna, SEO Director of VEA Technologies, joins E-Coffee with Experts to share how he got into SEO in a pretty unexpected way, discovering Black Hat World during a rough freshman year of college. What started with teaching himself WordPress and experimenting through trial and error eventually turned into a career spanning self-storage, e-commerce, and enterprise agency work.
In this episode, Andrew talks about how VEA Technologies is using AI to build a library of Claude skills for things like location page creation, sitemap monitoring, and content workflows. He also explains why self-storage is such a tough niche to stand out in organically, where proximity and reviews can matter more than keywords, and the difference between brand-level and facility-level visibility in AI search.
We also get into entity clarity, topical authority, structured data, and what makes content more likely to get cited by AI platforms. And while AI search is changing the game, Andrew explains why he still sees backlinks as table stakes for both traditional SEO and AI visibility.
To wrap things up, Andrew shares his take on learning SEO through trial and error, and one simple reminder: give yourself some grace.
Takeaways:
- Andrew discovered SEO through a Black Hat World forum during college struggles
- Self-taught WordPress knowledge still shapes his strategic decisions today
- VEA Technologies is building custom Claude skills for SEO workflows
- Self-storage is hard to differentiate; proximity and reviews matter most
- Brand-level AI visibility differs from facility-level structured data needs
- Backlinks remain table stakes for both SEO and AI platform rankings
- Content built well for Google is largely already AI citation ready
- His advice to his younger self: give yourself grace and publish often