Meet Matie Natov, Web Designer & Founder of Argh Matey Digital Marketing™
- Aug 17
- 6 min read
Web designer, SEO strategist and founder of Argh Matey Digital Marketing™
Argh Matey was founded by Matie Natov (pronounced May-tee), whose name has often sparked the phrase, “Argh, Matey!” — a fitting inspiration for a brand built on bold thinking and memorable execution.
With experience designing and optimizing websites for startups, small businesses and global brands including Snapchat, Meta and Sephora, Matie created Argh Matey to deliver high-performance websites that do more than look good. They're built to rank on Google, generate qualified leads and help businesses grow.
Today, Matie is a web designer based in Green Bay, Wisconsin, with deep roots in California, including San Francisco, Sacramento and Monterey.
Her approach brings together web design, user experience, SEO, content strategy, analytics and conversion optimization rather than treating each as a separate discipline. The goal is simple: create a website that helps the right people find your business, understand what makes it different and take action.
A Web Designer With Roots in Both UX Design and Business Marketing
Matie's path into web design started long before Argh Matey.
She studied Communication Design at California State University, Monterey Bay, with an emphasis on web design, graduating in 2014.
While studying in Monterey, Matie noticed something missing: there wasn't a student design club.
So she started one.
Matie founded the CSUMB Design Studio, growing what began as an idea into a community of 23 student designers. She also became an active leader within her web design coursework, helping classmates work through the challenges of designing and building for the web.
Those experiences helped shape an approach that still influences her work today: design gets better when people share ideas, ask questions and care about the details.
And Monterey itself left an impression.
The Pacific Ocean, rocky coastline, wildlife and famously curious sea otters made Monterey one of Matie's favorite places she has ever lived.
Years later, those two years on California's Central Coast remain an important part of both her personal story and her development as a web designer.
From San Francisco to Green Bay
Matie grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, where technology, creativity and design were part of the surrounding culture.
Her career would eventually bring her into digital work for nationally and globally recognized organizations, including experience connected to brands such as Meta, Sephora and Snap Inc.
Working in and around large digital organizations taught her how much goes into seemingly simple online experiences: content operations, UX decisions, accessibility, localization, analytics, technical implementation and the tiny details most visitors never consciously notice.
Those lessons now influence the work she does for smaller organizations.
A local business may not have the resources of a global technology company, but its website deserves the same level of intentional thinking.
Building Argh Matey in Green Bay, Wisconsin
Matie is now based in the Green Bay, Wisconsin area, where she operates Argh Matey Digital Marketing.
Moving from California to Wisconsin brought a new perspective to her work.
Instead of only thinking about websites at a national or global scale, Matie became increasingly interested in how excellent web design and SEO can help local businesses compete in their own communities.
That means understanding not only how a page looks, but questions like:
Can Google understand what this company does and where it operates?
Does the website match what prospective customers are actually searching for?
Can visitors immediately understand the company's value?
Is the website technically structured correctly?
Are analytics showing where customers come from and what they do next?
Does the design build enough trust for someone to contact the business?
This combination of web design and search strategy has become a defining part of Matie's work.
Web Design Built Around Being Found
Matie doesn't believe web design should end when a website looks polished.
Every design decision exists within a larger customer journey.
Someone searches Google. Someone asks ChatGPT for a recommendation. Someone lands on a service page. Someone compares several businesses. Someone checks reviews. Someone decides whether the company feels trustworthy enough to contact.
A strong website needs to support that entire process.
That's why Matie's web design work frequently incorporates:
SEO strategy. Understanding the searches and questions that can bring qualified prospects to the website.
Information architecture. Organizing pages so visitors and search engines can understand the business.
Technical SEO. Paying attention to page titles, metadata, headings, internal links, image optimization, alt text, structured data and other technical details.
Conversion-focused UX. Making it obvious what visitors should do next.
Analytics. Using platforms such as Google Analytics and Google Search Console to understand what is actually happening after a website launches.
Content strategy. Building useful pages around real customer needs rather than publishing content simply because someone said a company "needs a blog."
The result is a website designed to become more valuable over time.
Web Design With Measurable Business Results
Matie's work has helped service businesses turn organic search visibility into real inquiries and customers.
For AN Artistry, a service-based beauty business competing in the San Francisco market, Matie led the website design, SEO strategy and implementation. The business has reached prominent organic visibility for highly competitive searches such as "makeup artist" in its local market, helping generate approximately 1–5 qualified organic leads per day, with bookings often averaging more than $1,000.
For Starck Fitness, a personal training business serving Naperville, Illinois, Matie led web design and SEO strategy around high-intent local searches. Within the first two months following launch, the website generated eight qualified leads, with two becoming customers.
Her previous SEO work for a B2B company also contributed to significant organic growth, including a period in which website traffic increased by more than 487% and homepage traffic increased by more than 451%.
These results reinforce the philosophy behind Argh Matey:
Web design isn't finished when the website launches.
The real question is what happens afterward.
California Will Always Be Part of the Story
Although Argh Matey is headquartered in Wisconsin, much of Matie's story was written in California.
San Francisco Bay Area
Matie grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and later built significant portions of her professional career there.
It's where her familiarity with technology, digital culture and highly competitive markets began—and it remains a market she knows personally rather than simply targeting from afar.
Monterey
Monterey is where Matie formally developed her craft as a designer.
She lived there for two years while earning her Communication Design degree from California State University, Monterey Bay, concentrating much of her work on web design.
It's also where she founded a student design club, grew it to 23 members and discovered that she enjoyed not only creating things herself, but helping other designers grow.
And yes, she still has an unreasonable number of photographs of the Monterey coastline and sea otters.
Some things are worth keeping.
Sacramento
Sacramento has also been a recurring part of Matie's California life. With family in the area, she has spent significant time there over the years and maintains a personal connection to Northern California beyond the Bay Area.
As Argh Matey grows, Sacramento is one of the California markets where Matie hopes to build deeper relationships with businesses looking for thoughtful, search-focused web design.
Yes, the name is a play on "Arrr, matey."
But it also contains the founder's name: Matie.
Argh Matey was built to feel different from a traditional digital marketing agency.
Matie believes clients should understand what is happening with their websites.
Recommendations should have reasons behind them. Data should influence decisions.
And strategy shouldn't disappear behind a mysterious monthly retainer.
Sometimes the right answer is a redesign.
Sometimes it's fixing the website you already have.
Sometimes it's creating a page customers have been searching for all along.
And sometimes the smartest recommendation is to leave something alone.
The goal isn't to sell more marketing.
It's to figure out what will actually move the business forward.
Work Directly With Matie
When you hire Argh Matey, you're not handing your website to an anonymous production line.
You work directly with Matie on the strategy behind the work.
Depending on the project, that can include:
Website strategy and audits
Web design and redesign
Wix Studio, Webflow and WordPress development
Local SEO
Technical SEO
SEO and AEO strategy
Google Analytics 4 and Google Search Console
Content architecture
Conversion optimization
Landing pages
Website migrations
Ongoing website improvements
Whether you're looking for a web designer in Green Bay, have a business in San Francisco, Monterey or Sacramento, or simply want a web designer who thinks beyond aesthetics, Argh Matey can help you determine what your website needs next.
Have a website that isn't pulling its weight?
Tell Matie what isn't working, and let's figure out why.
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