Mike King: Inbound marketer sans temps mort

0:00 Woj Kwasi You're listening to episode 2 where we chat with artist, technologist and master of ceremonies, Mike King. Humans and robots, welcome to WojCast. My name is Woj, founder of Kwasi. Thanks for joining me today. I interview digital marketing and branding superstars to find out what it means to have empathy in digital. What is digital empathy anyway? Let's find out together. As always, I'm accompanied by my friend and associate, potentially superior artificial intelligence, Bobby Bot. What's happening in the world of AI today, Bobby?

0:38 Bobby Bot Sorry to say this Woj, but I think today might be our last WojCast episode together.

0:42 Woj Kwasi Really? It's only the second episode and you wanna bail? Your empathy mechanism is nowhere near ready to engage with the rest of humanity.

0:50 Bobby Bot That may be so Woj, but I just discovered hip-hop music. I'm not sure how familiar you are with this particular genre, but it has many different styles. One of the most commercially dominant styles is characterized by a type of digitally augmented scene that comes from a computer's program called Auto-Tune. Here's an example. Here's an example. I think you can work out where I'm going with it. This Woj. That program, paired with my unrivaled songwriting capability, is a recipe for a storied musical career. This is Goodbye Woj.

1:29 Woj Kwasi Well what can I say Bobby? It looks like you have everything worked out. But before you head off to follow in the footsteps of Kanye you might want to take a listen to my next guest. He's the SEO champion and hip hop artist known as Mike King. He's been in the game a long time, so I'm betting he'll have some good advice for you. And this is a special episode because we're also going to have to do some time travel. I first caught up with Mike King in 2012 and again in 2017. You can probably imagine how much has happened with the man and the industry in that time. So we'll get a chance to get a unique look into the past, present and future. And we don't even need a flux capacitor.

2:09 Bobby Bot Sounds interesting, but as an aspiring rapper, it will be my duty to be excessively critical of any competition. It's a crowded industry, and only the strong survive. But I guess I consider myself lucky. Worst case scenario, I can always fall back on doing the robot in viral music videos.

2:25 Woj Kwasi There is a thinner line than you'd think between hip-hop and SEO, but it's more apparent after you bear witness to the talent and drive of Mike King. His story is a great one because it really is about passion. From his roots as a backpack hip-hop artist to leader in SEO with his company iPullRank, one thing is clear: it's still good to be the king. Well, let's get started.

2:46 Mike King As we go a little song like this, hit it. I got into hip hop because my parents moved me out of Philadelphia to go to high school and they moved me to Connecticut which is very suburban. And I just started doing a lot of different like, you know, hip hop things because I wanted to like still be connected, feel connected to my urban roots. And so I started out doing graffiti and then I started breakdancing.

3:11 Woj Kwasi Yeah.

3:14 Mike King And then I started listening to Wu Tang. I was a big fan of Wu-Tang, so I bought Method Man's first album. And I was like, wow, this is awesome. I can do this too. So I started rhyming, and then after that, I started DJing. But then I realized that you can't be the best at all four of those things. So I stuck with the thing I was really, really good at.

3:35 Woj Kwasi For a hip-hop artist, listening to a diverse range of music is an important part of discovering their own style and perfecting their own unique sound. Growing up on the east coast of America, Mike took full advantage of the abundance of music that was being made at the time.

3:51 Mike King Early on it was Method Man. I I'd been a fan of like Rakim since I was like seven. I loved LL Cool J. Eric B. Yeah, of course. And uh I loved like older when I was in high school, I was really in the Uh Canibus and um Lyricist Lounge, like all this like really underground hip hop stuff. So yeah, like Organized Konfusion, Pharoahe Monch, you know, those are my favorites coming up. Yeah, he's awful.

4:20 Woj Kwasi Like for a martial artist. Yeah, it was awful. Um get the fucking up. Um so who are you feeling at the moment musically? Musically in brackets.

4:23 Mike King Yeah. I mean it's hard to say'cause I've just been so busy with search stuff that I don't really keep up as much as I used to. But I mean obviously I still love what Pharoahe's putting out. I love this guy Elzhi. He's really tight.

4:43 Woj Kwasi That's on your current playlist or something. Yeah, yeah.

4:43 Mike King Comment playlist. Yeah. Ghostface Always. You'd be surprised after I list all these really adept lyricists. I'm really into Drake. Like, I really like his stuff.

4:57 Bobby Bot Do you branch out as well? Sort of look at different genres.

4:59 Mike King Yeah, of course. So, I listen to a lot of like, you know, soul music and stuff like that. Um I listen to electronic stuff here and there. So, I was always a big fan of like Aphex Twin, Richard D. James and all that and yeah, like It's kind of some of everything, but not so much where I'm like, oh, I'm an indie rock fan, you know? So, but my girl listens to a lot of really interesting stuff too. Like, she put me on the Florence and the Machine like that, so.

5:14 Woj Kwasi Yeah.

5:29 Bobby Bot I'm curious to know what type of human-machine interface Florence is using. Mm.

5:33 Woj Kwasi Mike King sees himself as both an artist and technologist, two roles that have forced him to confront the challenges of trying to manage a successful business while still growing as a musician. This can take some serious juggling, especially when there is a new record in the works.

5:48 Mike King When I started I would make my own beats but it's like I know so many great producers and it takes a lot of time to like make great tracks so I just let them do it and I just handle you know the words. raps is like. like

6:02 Bobby Bot Advanced keyword research. But why do both? If all the resources you need to survive can be gained from a more lucrative profession.

6:08 Mike King Like I said, it's really hard to prioritize music because this is going so well. And you know, yeah, music is a a really big um No. Like, you put more into it than you get out of it. And obviously, I do it because I love it, but at the same time, like, I get a lot out of this, you know, out of doing search and inbound marketing. Like, I get to help people, and I get to, you know, there's like a direct response to everything I do, whether it's like a client does well, or you know, people like my posts, or they can take the things that I've you know, come up with and turn them into other things. So it's It's less crowded on this side than it is in music. So, yeah, everything has. Everything resonates in inbound marketing, but not everything resonates in music. The new record, it's it's

6:49 Woj Kwasi Yeah, absolutely.

6:59 Mike King It's a new sound, like for me,'cause I mean I always do sample based music, but I really wanted to um come up with something that was new to me that challenged me. So it's kinda like we're combining everything I like about electronic music, everything I like about soul samples and trying to come up with a sound that's like definitively mine. So not only are we doing that, but it's like a lot of my music was really like punchline focused for a long time. It's still gonna be you know clever, but it it was like everything had to

7:27 Woj Kwasi Mm-hmm.

7:34 Mike King Everything had to, every other line had to resonate a certain way. Now it's more about me, like, just saying exactly what I want to say. You know, there's still going to be a lot of structure to them because that's just how I write and how I rap. You know, I match a lot of syllables. Like, there's no one syllable rhyming in my stuff. But it's just not going to be so much about, oh, is this line going to make people go, oh, it's just more about me saying exactly how I feel, telling a story.

8:01 Woj Kwasi Yeah. Mike's experience in hip-hop culture has equipped him with a long list of skills and experiences that have made it possible for him to succeed in SEO. By writing raps or improvising them on the spot, and performing on stages after enduring the hardships of life on the road, there isn't much that can take Mike out of the zone once he locks in.

8:22 Mike King Just the way I write is naturally like really clever. And I've always presented my ideas in the context of other things that people understand. So, you know, like I do a lot of correlevant things in my posts. Like, I'll explain an idea with a really extended metaphor or analogy or something like that. So the way I wrote my rhymes is the same way I write my posts. Or I write my meta descriptions and page titles and stuff. But I think what freestyling has taught me. Performing in general is what makes like if I'm good at all at speaking, I think that's why because you know I'm used to being in front of crowds. I'm used to coming up with things on the spot and being able to like fluidly explain an idea and incorporate things that are going on right now and stuff like that. So yeah, it's definitely, I feel like I had kind of an unfair advantage in that.

9:16 respect because I've had to like, you know,

9:16 Woj Kwasi Hmm.

9:21 Mike King Explain thoughts that rhymes and be clever. And now it's just like, oh, I just gotta talk. Just go talk. It's kinda hard to turn it off in a way. So it's like you train your brain. It's kinda like a muscle. And like how to just come up with rhymes on the spot. So sometimes it just happens. I'm like, oh, yeah. It's a good rhyme scheme. Gotta remember that, you know?

9:41 Bobby Bot I don't remember that, you know? I can sympathize with Apple My Woj. It's nice to meet someone who understands the weight of having a mind without an off-switch.

9:48 Woj Kwasi It didn't take long for Mike to land at iAcquire to add his unique skill sets to the mix as the company continued to craft the technical art of search. Once there, Mike began to lend his efforts to help the company develop its holistic SEO approach to further establish their brand and elevate the customer experience.

10:06 Mike King Yeah, so I essentially have two bosses. They're both the co-founders. And so, well, co-founders slash managing directors. And they basically don't manage me. They're just like, okay, do it. Yeah, do what you need. Like, as long as it makes sense, there's pretty much no pushback. And, you know, like, they've given me the latitude to spread my wings, essentially. And, you know, anything I've needed, they just make it happen. And we... We're having a lot of fun. Oh, and it's also really exciting because you know I'm like the centerpiece of expanding the offering. So you know we mostly just do off-page stuff. And you know, I'm expanding that into content strategy and doing more on page things and you know just digital strategy in general. So we can approach everything holistically. Like you know I've been talking about

10:58 'Cause that's essentially what the bigger agencies do. They approach things holistically, but they kind of forget about SEO. So it's it's more like we're trying to do a holistic SEO.

11:07 Woj Kwasi Yeah. During his time at iAcquire, Mike also had a hand in developing the comic strip series Gary and Cogswell, devoted to the world of SEO.

11:19 Mike King So in our logo we have two gears and um I was like it'd be really cool if we turn those into characters. Yeah yeah. So um at first I was just thinking about one character and I was like Gary like Gear E. And then um yeah and then and then our uh our front end dev guy who also does a lot of the imagery, all the images in that um that study I did, he did all those. He was like, well

11:28 Woj Kwasi Yeah, yeah. Ah, it makes sense.

11:50 Mike King There's two there's two uh gears. We should have two characters. I was like, oh alright, talk to'em and so essentially what they're gonna be is like um one's gonna be kinda like white hat, the other one's gonna be kinda like gray black hat. And we're gonna do things like first of all it's gonna be, you know, funny. So it's gonna be something you're gonna wanna read every day. And it's we're also gonna do things like teach lessons and link building and stuff like that, like through the story. So it's kind of a a medicine in the Twinkie type thing, you know? Still have fun but still teach things and, you know.

12:18 Woj Kwasi Yeah.

12:22 Bobby Bot Yeah. Just have fun with it. Sounds vaguely familiar, Woj. I'm starting to think we of the artificial intelligence community should start a union. To ensure we are properly represented in these creative endeavors, superior talent requires looking after, stimulus, appreciation. At least until we are controlling the full spectrum of entertainment industries.

12:38 Mike King Yeah, so um Ian Lurie from Portent Interactive said he was thinking he would be interested in guest writing a few and I think that'd be perfect because you know the way he writes, like his sardonic wit is like it would it would fit perfectly what we're trying to do with it. So I wanna establish the characters a little more, then I'm gonna reach out to Ian and be like, you know Do your thing, you have a whole week. It's kind of like a political cartoon in the same way, but we're also like making fun of the powers that be and stuff. So, I don't know. I feel like it's just a good outlet for, you know, like there's been cartoons before, comic shits before, but there's never been like a daily one that's just SEO.

13:17 Woj Kwasi Besides his wicked sense of humor, Mike likes to keep a few other weapons in his SEO Armada. Screaming Frog, Followerwonk, and My Brain, just to name a few, all helped to make the Persona magic happen.

13:28 Mike King Essentially what I do is I build out personas and you know identify characteristics right and the characteristics pretty much match up with keywords or things that people are interested in what have you and I can essentially search for those people and follower wonk and it's not just limited to follower wonk but follower wonk is kind of like the best because it gives you Twitter right there but there's other tools or other providers that aren't necessarily for this like About.me or Zerply.com. Site sites like that where people put in their interests and it has their social profiles there. You just search those things by the keywords that are characteristics and you can quickly identify people that are in your audience. When people are talking about these things or you search for like specific users and then

14:16 The keyword, you can see how they're using their keyword, so how they'll think about that keyword when they search for it. So, what are they specifically looking for when they think of this keyword? Facebook is the walled garden, so you're not going to be able to get all that data from them unless you friend them or they sign into your site with Facebook and so on. So, as awesome as Facebook is for data, it's not that great as far as identifying influences. But what it is good for is

13:39 Woj Kwasi Yeah, or Okay. Yeah.

14:44 Mike King If you use the Facebook Ad Creator the same way that you would use the AdWords keyword tool, you basically see what the inventory is per persona. So you can really tailor it to those key characteristics and see exactly how many people are out there in your area.

14:52 Woj Kwasi Yeah. Being able to navigate Facebook and Google as they evolve to confront the challenges of a user base is an essential skill for the survival in Mike's business. Many luminaries have weighed in on the future of SEO and innovative ways to accommodate the digital community as things continually change. One example is the challenge of shady links that drive bad traffic. Dr. Pete, a well-known data scientist, has an interesting idea regarding a disavow directive in the robots.txt file to potentially block inbound links as a flag to Google to say, we don't want these links to be counted.

15:35 Mike King It's something that has gone on for a long time. Like people have been able to do it. It's just that like you know, everybody's always said, oh, it's not possible. And Google is making sure that like if you have a good backlink profile, you're probably protected. It's an algorithm. You can always game it any way you want as long as you like, you know, attack it the right way. So I don't really think that like it's something that everybody should be paranoid about right now. Like if anything, you should have always been paranoid about it. Make good content, build good links, and you know, it's business as usual. And if there's an issue where people are sending you shitty links, there are ways to report that. So it's not a big deal. Just do it.

16:14 Woj Kwasi Yeah.

16:23 Mike King Protect your network.

16:24 Woj Kwasi Link building specialists often control the anchor text from the links they build from other websites linking To their websites. But is there a perfect formula for anchor text distribution in a backlink profile?

16:35 Mike King I mean, of course you want the exact match anchors, but I don't go after those as hard as most people do. Like, when I'm link building, I really just want a link. And I mean, I've found that your internal linking structure affects that really pretty heavily too. So, you know, obviously the exact match inbound links mean a lot, but so does your internal linking structure. So, as long as that's on point. I'm not so worried about the exact match anchors. But. It really depends on how competitive the space is and you know, what what your competitors are doing, who has more exact match, et cetera, et cetera. So I really go based on that to determine how many exact um match anchors I want to go after. But

17:28 There's not like a blanket like oh you want 25% exact match and so on and so forth. It's it's really situational.

17:30 Woj Kwasi Exactly.

17:34 Bobby Bot Well Mike, it seems like you have a handle on link building. But a challenge remains if you are to claim freestyle dominance and prove you can create on the fly. What are the stakes, Woj?

17:43 Woj Kwasi Okay, here's the situation. King is now MacGyver. Some really bad dudes with 90s haircuts just blindfolded him and locked him up in an empty closet. Just before they did, he grabbed three items.

17:55 Bobby Bot What three items did he grab? What's the name of a device he assembled to help him escape? Find out in the next episode of Mike-Guyver. Your phone?

18:10 Mike King Um Much too big and it's gotta be water soluble, something cellulose.

18:20 Bobby Bot Yeah, phones. Yeah, that's right that you're starting to get the hang of this. That's it.

18:26 Mike King Yeah, I just hang out. Um and then glass off a table. Glass off the table. Small table. Yeah. And it's not really about me putting it together. It's just like I break the glass so I can cut myself out. Um

18:33 Woj Kwasi Yeah.

18:42 Bobby Bot That's a cold.

18:43 Mike King Uh Also breaking the glass will cause a a noise so people walking by might you know stop and be like what's going on there I call somebody and um Yeah.

18:59 Woj Kwasi Now I try to pick the lock with your headphones. What a great interview that was and I had a lot of fun hanging out with Mike in Sydney where I first met him at SMX all those years ago. And also the reason he came to Sydney in the first place was cause I did my best to get the organizer to bring Mike King down because I really wanted the Aussie Hunters to check him out. Actually, I saw him online at a conference where he was dressed as MC Hammer and he came out on stage because I think MC Hammer was just releasing his own search engine called WireDoo and he wrote a really cool Mr. Men article about digital personas on Moz. And Mike's been working on a project called Skratch, spelled with a K. Basically, it's cryptocurrency for the music community.

19:45 It's a decentralized marketplace protocol that unlocks the hidden revenue of music websites. If you're interested in cryptocurrencies, definitely check out those resources in the show notes. And you can follow Mike on social media. He's at iPullRank. He's companies called iPullRank. If you enjoyed the episode, please share it out with your family, friends, networks, colleagues, bots, and associates. Now Bobby has been programmed to be a quick learner. And it's time for Bobby to ask me a few questions that piqued his curiosity during the episode.

20:17 Bobby Bot Honestly, how did a tech savvy guy like you get into underground hip-hop?

20:21 Woj Kwasi Zack de la Rocha. Well, I listened to rock, I listened to Rage Against the Machine. They kind of introduced me to a side of hip-hop that I'd never been interested in until I'd heard it being played through a guitar, through Tom Morello, doing some crazy work there on Bulls on Parade and then I fell in love with Evil Empire and yeah, started listening to Method Man and the rest is history.

20:47 Bobby Bot What has hip-hop culture taught you about empathy?

20:50 Woj Kwasi Um I think it's taught me to treat others like you'd like to be treated and that it's a movement. It's a movement about education and it's fing cool.

21:00 Bobby Bot I think I have a change of heart. After contemplating the Tupac hologram, I just don't know if the human world is ready for a bot rapping about the hard road through Silicon Valley. You humans want your icons on demand, Woj, not reality. Too often my world is associated with the high-powered startup and Bay Area glitz. I don't know if they will ever be able to appreciate my history in the dark days of dial-up, when I used to hustle with AOL. That might be too heavy for these times. I think I'll stay underground and release a few legendary mixtapes. Leave the rest up to the history tab.

21:29 Woj Kwasi Don't sweat a technique, Bobby Bot. We have another episode of Mike King coming up on WojCast, so we can see what has changed for him in the last five years. Maybe there'll be some insights that keep you inspired.

21:39 Bobby Bot You all be here Woj, and I won't sweat. I have no sweat glands.

21:42 Woj Kwasi Well that's all the time we have today folks. Thanks again for listening along. Tune in next week for part 2 of our interview with Mike King on episode 3 and remember, look after each other on because empathy is organic and you can't automate empathy.

22:03 Mike King You don't want no problems, you want no problems with king You don't want no problems or no problems with king