075: Mentorship and Representation: Mike’s Journey from Music to Mastering SEO

Danny Gavin Host

00:05

Hello everyone, I’m Danny Gavin, founder of Optidge marketing, a professor, and the host of Digital Marketing Mentor. Get ready to get human technology, SEO, generative AI, and engineering skills to help create powerful marketing campaigns to grow businesses like SAP, American Express, Nordstrom, Etsy, and Adidas. Mike’s the author of a soon-to-be-released book, the Science of SEO, which I can’t wait to read, and he’s been recognized by USA Today as one of the top 10 influencers in 2022 and was named one of the top marketing influencers to follow by LinkedIn in 2021. He’s a musician, and he’s one heck of a dresser. How are you today, Mike? 

Mike King Guest

01:08

I’m fantastic!  I’m excited to be here. 

Danny Gavin Host

01:10

We’re doing a remote location from San Diego, which is pretty cool. I know you’re typically in New York. How do you like the East Coast versus the West Coast? 

Mike King Guest

01:16

You know what? I would be completely honest with you: The West Coast is lazy compared to us on the East Coast. You know everything is easy and chill, and it seems like everything is wellness first, which is great. It’s just like I get out of New York, and, you know, the wave of stress is just gone because everything here is like, how can you feel better? 

Danny Gavin Host

01:37

Yeah, I feel like when you’re walking down the street in Manhattan, no one’s asking you that. So, let’s start by asking where you went to school and what you studied. 

Mike King Guest

01:44

Yeah, I went to Howard University in DC, which has been getting a lot more visibility recently, with Kamala Harris being an alumnus. I studied systems and computer science. 

Danny Gavin Host

01:55

When you look back at that experience—I know it’s a long time ago—are there any experiences, specifically inside or outside the classroom, that were impactful in directing your path? 

Mike King Guest

02:06

So I feel like you just nicely called me old there, but yeah, I think it was more outside of the classroom because for me, you know, I’ve been coding since I was 12. And I learned a lot of math in class, which was great. Still, as far as like what we were learning, it was like C++, which I already knew, and then Java, which I didn’t know but was similar to C++, so I didn’t feel very challenged by computer science, and so I learned a lot more about just life, frankly, on campus and how to connect with people. I spent more time doing music-related stuff there, and I just felt like, okay, this is where I want to take my life, and then, ultimately, my path through music is what got me to SEO. I learned academic things, of course, but the things that impacted my new life were more like social and emotional skills that I picked up. 

Danny Gavin Host

03:05

So, in 2024, if someone came to you and asked, “Should I go to college?” There are many ways I can learn things outside of it. What advice would you generally give? 

Mike King Guest

03:14

College is super valuable, but it’s not a requirement for everyone, right? Like, if you don’t know what you want to do or how to do it, then of course, go to college because not only will they give you those skills, but you’ll also build your network in a variety of ways by going to school and, depending on where you go to school, that network may be more inherently valuable as well. So there’s a reason to go to college. Still, if you’re self-motivated, a self-starter, autodidactic, and like you can learn, you don’t necessarily need it because it’s more about what you can do than where you knew it. I meet many people as we interview folks to come on board at iPoleRank, and you’ll have these very well-decorated people. They went to these great schools and had master’s degrees. When you sit them down to do something, they have no idea what to do, whereas we’ll also have people who, like you know, might be college dropouts or never went to college or just took some course or whatever, and they know what to do. 

04:19

So, I look for people who can do things; sometimes, they come as college graduates. Sometimes, they don’t. I’m not a college graduate, you know. I went but didn’t finish, so that is not a requirement to be good at something because I’ve seen firsthand that you can be good at things without graduating college. 

Danny Gavin Host

04:42

So, Mike, how would you define a mentor? 

Mike King Guest

04:44

So, I think there are both implicit and explicit mentors, right? So the explicit mentor is what you think, or what most people think of when they think mentors like someone who sits you down and says like, hey, you’re not thinking big enough, or you’re doing this wrong, or you should think about this in this way or that way, or whatever. And then there are the implicit mentors, people you look up to, and you’re like, okay, they’re doing this thing this way. Well, maybe I should think about this thing another way. And so you’re learning by watching what they do, and you may or may not have interactions with them directly, but you are changing how you interact in the world based on the information you’re gleaning from that person. 

Danny Gavin Host

05:24

And it sounds like to be a well-rounded individual. It’s important to have both. 

Mike King Guest

05:27

I mean, it could be. I’ve settled on that because I have no explicit mentors, so you know where my improvements come from when I think about it. It’s a lot of reading, self-evaluation, and looking at the people I respect and saying, “Hey, it looks like they learned something here.” Perhaps I can reconsider what I’m doing. 

Danny Gavin Host

05:55

And so, yeah, I think you can get it either through a combination, or you can get it from one or the others. So, let’s talk about one of your explicit mentors, Tony Effick. How has he been influential in your life? 

Mike King Guest

06:02

Tony is probably one of the only people to sit me down and say, look, you need to think bigger about what you’re doing, Right? So, like my path into SEO, and it’s probably similar to, you know, a lot of people’s, is that you kind of come in, you have no idea what you’re doing, you figure it out, and then you’re like, cool, this is how SEO works, this is what I’m doing. You make minor adjustments based on things you learn, but I was your typical technical content-linking SEO. Then I worked at a big ad agency, which was in the Publicis Network, and everything around me is all about creativity and strategy and these sorts of things that I fit into, and I know enough about, but I wasn’t thinking big picture. And so Tony was like, ‘Nah, Nah,’ here’s how search fits into the big picture of a strategy, and here’s how you do big picture strategic thinking. He helped me level up, and he was one of the sources of why I started doing all the persona-based stuff because it was a good way for me to fit into the marketing mix in a way the CMO thinks about it or in the way other teams think about it. So, he taught me how to be an actual strategist. Once I got the bug, I could see the matrix and know where everything fits. Then I could add to my skillset in a way that made, you know, bigger picture sense, and so it allowed me to figure out how okay, here’s how everything I can do plays together, Cause I’ve been building websites since 1995. 

07:44

But when you’re an SEO, they’re like, ‘Cool, do the meta tags.’ And then you’re having these conversations with the people with a developer in their title, who don’t want to listen to you because they’re like, you’re the meta tag guy. But then, when you come in, you have a big-picture discussion. You can say here’s how all these pieces fit together, not just from a strategic perspective, but you can break things down from a tactical perspective. You quickly get a lot of buy-in from many people at the higher levels, and then you can bring your ideas to life. Tony was instrumental in helping me understand the big picture so I could play in the bigger ocean of strategy than just sitting at the little kid’s table for SEO. 

Danny Gavin Host

08:34

Do you still keep in touch with Tony? 

Mike King Guest

08:36

Yeah, so. Tony still lives in Brooklyn. He’s at Google now. He runs something important on YouTube, and we’ll catch up here and there. He has a bunch of kids. I have a bunch of kids. Well, I have two kids, not a bunch of kids, and we always talk about, like, hey, let’s get the kids together. You know, I was there for his birthday a couple of years ago, so Tony is like still someone that’s in my orbit, and when things are not going well, I’ll send a text like, ‘Hey, Tony, like what do you think I should do here?’ You know, so it’s been a super valuable relationship to me. I’ve learned so much from him, both explicitly and implicitly. 

Danny Gavin Host

09:10

It’s wonderful that you have someone like that. When you need it, you can send him a text, and that’s important. So, let’s talk about some of the implicit mentors and people around you that you look up to and have influenced you. 

Mike King Guest

09:22

Rand Fishkin has done so much for me, both explicitly and implicitly. You know, he’s always someone I can reach out to when things again aren’t going well, and he can give me some feedback and whatever. I remember one time I was going to do a whiteboard Friday at Moz, and I had no idea what to talk about, and I sat down with Rand for like 30 seconds, and he stared in space for a couple of seconds, and then he’s like you should talk about this and it was like the perfect idea, Right. So, it’s kind of indicative of my experiences with Rand. You know, a lot of times, I’ll have no idea or some idea, and he’ll just help me quickly refine things on how to do it. Or, as another example, with the Google leak, he came to my house. I was just like, ‘Yo, things aren’t going well right now, I don’t know what I’m doing, we’re hanging on by a thread,’ and that’s not something I would typically be vulnerable with people to say like I would just, you know, power through it. And then a few weeks later, he’s like, hey, I got these leaked documents. I think you can help me, you know, parse through them, and it’s become the single biggest opportunity in my career. It’s led to some of the biggest deals I’ve ever closed. So that’s what I mean. Like he’s looked out for me in ways that he didn’t have to do, Right, and that’s just him. I don’t think it’s anything specifically unique about me; it’s just how he is in the world. He’s always happy to help. So Rand has done a lot of stuff like that for me. 

10:53

Another implicit mentor, I would say, would be Will Reynolds. Right, like when I, you know, went to my first SEO conference, which was MozCon, I was just looking around, like, wow, this is so cool. Like all these thought leaders, they have all these cool ideas; they’re so clever. But nothing in me made me think, “Oh, I can do this too.” I saw Will Reynolds get on stage, and I was like, ‘Oh, they let black people do this, okay?’ 

11:20

And so there’s been a lot of things that, you know, I’ve watched Will Reynolds do, and it’s been like, okay, that’s the way you’re supposed to do this, right? He’s very vocal about his altruism, how he runs his companies, and how he is in the world. And again, you look at that, and you’re like, okay, this is a paragon of how this is meant to be done. Then, you remove the bits and pieces that resonate with you and create your bit. So, I would also look at him as someone like that. And then you know, there’s just a lot of people in business that take little tidbits from where you’re like, oh, this guy’s doing, or this woman is doing, something that’s interesting. Perhaps I should try that. So I take a lot of inspiration from many places, from people I know, I don’t know, and then I use that to determine, like, OK, here’s what I want to do, and here’s who I want to be in the world. 

Danny Gavin Host

12:18

So you mentioned Will being important because he showed you what was possible. Do you feel like you’re that as well, now for young African-American men to look up to? Oh wow, look at this successful person. I can accomplish this as well. 

Mike King Guest

12:29

Many people reach out to me, which is why representation matters. I was sitting in this room watching all these people, being like, oh yeah, this is not for me, and that’s not something that I typically do like in life in general just from all the experiences that I’ve had and so on, but in that situation, I felt that way. So many people have reached out to me, not just you know, black people, but also, you know, people of color, in general, reached out to me, and they say, like hey, you know, I love to see you doing what you do in the authentic way that you do it because sometimes it’s not just about like you know what you look like, how you present or whatever. It’s also just the way you are in the world. Like, I’m not somebody who code-switches. I’m not somebody who you know acts differently in these environments, and for some people, that makes them uncomfortable. But I’m like, I’m here, this is who I am, you know I’m not changing who I am just because you know this is how everyone else acts. 

13:36

I get a lot of people that reach out to me for that, and they’re like, I appreciate that you’re not acting differently in this world. But yeah, also, black people reach out to me, and they’re like, wow, you know, you’re such inspiration or whatever. I appreciate that, and I don’t take it for granted at all. Like I understand the gravity of my position and what I do, I always look to pay that forward wherever I can. And so when people reach out to me, and they’re like, hey, you know I’m trying to figure this out, I always try to make time to be like, hey, you know, here’s what I’ve done, here’s what’s worked for me. It may not work for you, but let’s talk through it. I’m happy to do that because you never know what impact you will have on that next person. And you know, I just want to do my best to make the spaces I’m in better for people like me who also want to be in those spaces. 

Danny Gavin Host

14:24

It’s incredible and powerful. One of my employees was with me at Brighton SEO last year. I was so excited that I could introduce him to you because it’s like this: someone you know has potentially walked the same path as you and someone to look up to and look at how successful he is, and it was just lovely, right? It’s nice to be able to create that connection. It was just very inspiring for me. 

Mike King Guest

14:49

Yeah, again, like I feel like it’s my duty to do that because I don’t want anyone to feel the way that I felt in that room where I was like, this is not for me, because who’s to say it’s not for me, it’s for whoever can do it. And you know, I think the things I’ve shared with the SEO community, imagine if I hadn’t watched Will Reynolds and I didn’t share any of that. I think that would have been a huge disservice. And I’m sure there have been people in the past who were even better than the things that I’ve done, who have felt that way and not felt like they could be included here, and we’ve missed out on the things they had to contribute. So, I think it’s essential for me to keep doing that work. 

Danny Gavin Host

15:32

And it’s interesting. You make me think about the concept of representation. I posted something about it recently, but why is it necessary at a conference? But it’s funny, it’s just that point. I’ve never really thought about it. But just to have a mix of people so that everyone in the crowd has someone they can look up to and say, that could be me. It’s so powerful. You only think about that, right? 

Mike King Guest

15:54

I think I might be underselling how impactful seeing Will was for me. While he was speaking, I pitched for SMX East and got it, which created all of this for me. So, for someone to see themselves on the stage is so powerful. 

Danny Gavin 

16:16

All right, so now let’s talk about your mentorship style. 

Danny Gavin Host

16:18

You’ve spoken about mentoring anyone who wants to come to you, right? But let’s talk about employees and your colleagues at iPullRank. How do you mentor them? 

Mike King Guest

16:30

To be honest, I don’t know if I’m the best at this, but here’s my approach. When we interview people, one of the critical outputs is that once you’ve made it through, we build a coaching plan. Here’s what we need this role to do, what you want to accomplish, and where you want to go. Okay, cool. Here’s our plan to close those gaps and then effectively manage that plan. 

16:51

Right, like we come up with a series of OKRs collectively, and when I say collectively, they put together the first draft, and then we’ll edit it together and say, okay, well, you’ve got all these things, but we also need this, and then we have an action plan based on that. So, what are the things you want to accomplish? What are the things you need to learn? Where do you need more experience to be more comfortable, confident, and effective? 

17:15

That’s where we’re building our plan off of, and then, from there, I do bi-weekly one-on-ones where we’re discussing those items. We’re talking about how you are doing, how your life is going, and how you align with our company values.  Our value set is PROUD, which stands for proactive, reliable, outstanding, helpful, and dedicated. We talk through, like, okay, well, where did you not exemplify those things, so we can figure out how to continuously improve? I’m more like, let’s do the big picture plan, and that’s work on that over time so that we can get you to where you need to go and where I need you to go to do better work. So I don’t know if that’s the best approach, but I like structured approaches, so we’re all clear about what we’re doing. It also leaves space for variance, as required, but that’s how I do it.  

Danny Gavin Host

18:06

I love it! I think one of the unique things is that just from talking to people, you know, often you have a need in a company. You hired someone to fill that hole, right? And it’s like, OK, these are things we need from you to fill that hole, right? Go ahead, right, but you’re saying no, I’m starting with what you want, right, With what you need to accomplish, and then let’s see how that fits into what our goals and what our plans are and that way, you keep the person motivated but also fulfill what the company needs. I don’t think everyone approaches it that way. Kudos to you.

Mike King Guest

18:32

I mean, that was just the way that made sense to me. Here’s the thing: perhaps it was a function of me never staying anywhere long enough, but in the places where I worked, I don’t think there was enough of a like performance and mentoring culture, even with Tony. Tony was only my manager for six months, and then he moved on to another agent, so there wasn’t enough space for me to see the long-term approach to performance management and mentorship. So, what would I want? And then also, I’ve read all the books, you know, like work rules and things like that, like all the books, and I was like cool, let me take pieces from this and then put together an approach that makes sense to me. So that’s how I landed on it. 

Danny Gavin Host

19:13

I know one of my colleagues will be excited that we mentioned the word OKR in this episode, so kudos to you, Mike. Let’s transition over to SEO. My question to you is that we’ve got the Google leaks from a couple of months ago, and a lot of it feels like it’s pointing towards optimizing for the traditional 10-11 links on Google. Now we also have the AI overviews that are coming in and the question is, man, how do I optimize for those? Right, so we’ll get into it in more detail, but do you feel like these are two? Are these competing? Are they connected? And I know it’s deep, but I’d love your opinion. 

Mike King Guest

19:53

Yeah, they’re not competing; they just operate differently, right? So, when you’re trying to optimize for a standard organic search, standard web search, or whatever you want to call it, it’s more about how relevant the entire page is to that query. Then, of course, you’ve got to know the authority metrics. Do you have the links? Another big component, reinforced by the leak and the DOJ antitrust trial testimony, is that the user’s behavior and how they interact with your page matters a lot. Are you driving clicks? Are people staying on your site after they’ve clicked through? So on and so forth. 

20:32

But as far as that, as it compares to AI overviews, AI overviews are driven by what’s called retrieval augmented generation, which is a paradigm where you combine a large language model with the search engine. So, it breaks your pages down into chunks. Then, it looks for the most relevant chunk to the keyword and the prompt they’re using in the background.

21:04

So, really, what that’s about is finding the most relevant paragraph or sentence to the user’s needs. 

21:07

So I think of that as a micro-optimization, whereas for web search, it’s more like a macro optimization for the page. So they don’t necessarily conflict with each other. It’s just that doing it for AI overviews is going to be way more granular than what you’re doing for the standard search. And then the other thing with AI overviews is that it also uses structured data heavily, not just like the individual structured data you have on your page, but also the structured data that Google is building across the web and about the world and so on. There are going to be instances where it’s just a fact that Google has seen across the web and corroborated, and you can’t necessarily change it because that fact is all across the web; you can’t just change it on your site. But when they’re using content only found on a handful of sites, you have the opportunity to change what that answer will be and appear in those citations to the AI operators. 

Danny Gavin Host

22:06

Awesome, that’s a great explanation, thank you. I don’t want to spend too much time discussing the Google leak, but I have a question. You know, you, I, and many other people have made a lot of money, or we make money. It’s our livelihood through this thing called Google, and so it’s kind of like this love-hate relationship where it’s like, man, if Google were to disappear today, it really would affect us, right? But on the other hand, that doesn’t mean that suddenly everything they do is suddenly correct. Was there a part of you getting involved in this? Or just in general, when you maybe do call out like the big brothers, like Google. Is there a part where it’s like I’m kind of like hitting the hand that feeds me? How do you deal with that? 

Mike King Guest

22:47

Yeah, I mean, there’s an aspect of that, and even with the DOJ trial, you know, them deciding that it’s a monopoly, and there’s like considerations that they may break up Google and so on. Everything I see them talk about: I’m like, yes, I do want Google to be held accountable, but I don’t want you to do any of the things that you all are considering. Like, I don’t want it to be them getting rid of Chrome. I don’t want them to get rid of Android; I don’t want them to give up all their data, their query logs, and so on, like other search engines. I just want them to make a better search experience. Even during that trial, they talk about how, like, yeah, Google is the best, you know, it is a marvel of human technology, and so, yes, it is a love-hate relationship. Because, you know, as a user, I’m like, wow, I remember what search engines were like before this. Like AltaVista was trash, lycos was trash, like you know what I mean. This is remarkable. As a computer scientist, I find this remarkable. 

23:44

But at the same time, you gotta recognize, when they make these changes, what is that doing to these small businesses? It’s crushing these businesses. So, to your point, anything they do to change Google will have dramatic second-order effects, right? If the search is no longer viable, then ‘yes’ will send a shockwave across the SEO agency, which is already, or the industry, which is already underpaid. We are responsible for the biggest portion of traffic from any channel, but we are the channel that costs the least. It’s ridiculous, right? 

24:26

So, yes, it is biting the hand that feeds because, at the same time, I am exposing how Google actually works, which is going to make the job even more difficult for Google. But at the same time, I come at this not only just as someone who’s trying to make money off of Google but also as someone with a very intense curiosity about how information retrieval works and the advancements that Google has made that have changed the science of how search works. So, of course, I want to know how it works, and by design, Google has to not tell me how it works, and I’m smart enough to figure it out. So, of course, I will share that because it enriches me for my business, but it also satisfies my deep curiosity about this technology. You know, it allows me to contribute in ways that then I get back even more information from other people in this space who are also just researching this from a, you know, slightly different angle. So it’s it’s biting the hand that feeds, but it’s also like I have to do it. 

Danny Gavin Host

25:37

Another interesting conclusion from the leak, which is not a direct conclusion in a way, was that we should focus on customers and not the leak. Do you want to talk more about that? What pushed you to come to that conclusion? 

Mike King Guest

25:49

When you think about impacting the things that Google is measuring at scale, it’s not by doing these little hacks; it’s by making something people want and promoting it right. I see this as user experience, relevance, and authority when you think about it again. Well, when we say things like be a brand, which no one wants to hear because it’s such an ambiguous idea, brands are going to be the ones that are going to have the better user experience because people remember these brands, and they’re like oh yeah, I searched for something. A brand I know has shown up. I am, of course, going to click on that more than a brand I don’t know. Brands have the money and the wherewithal to invest in relevance, making robust, comprehensive pieces of content and experiences that are beyond just one piece of content. Brands will also be able to capture that authority because, again, if you see a brand you recognize, you have a higher likelihood of liking that brand. So, at the end of the day, you need to be a brand to create this stuff at scale. 

26:55

Sure, you can buy a bunch of links to get the same number, but you’re not going to have the same quality of links because we’ve just learned how quality is measured: it’s based on pages that get more traffic and rank for things. 

27:07

Where you’re building your links from will not be sites that get a bunch of traffic or rank for things. So, a brand is going to beat you there. A brand will beat you in user metrics because, again, a brand will be more attractive to people. You can fake that by getting many people to click on your things. Still, it will be people from, like, you know, random countries in the middle of nowhere. It does not have the same signal as a user logged into Chrome in the United States or wherever location you’re trying to rank for, so it will be a diluted signal anyway. So, again, the focus needs to be on how I do this stuff at scale. And it’s going to be by actually building a brand that people remember and want to read content from. 

Danny Gavin Host

27:53

So, I used to pitch that SEO was David and Goliath. It was the leveling field that allowed David to win. So how do we, based on what you just said, what does a small, medium-sized business do? It feels like it’s difficult. 

Mike King Guest

28:06

I think that part hasn’t changed because you start from the long tail when you’re a small business. You use that as the opportunity to drive the traffic. You build up your branded term, so more people are coming to you that way, and then over time, you will have the brand signals, the authority, and the relevance to be more competitive. It’s not a situation where you can launch a new website today and compete with Amazon. That’s just not realistic; that’s how things used to work when Google was far less sophisticated and SEO was far less sophisticated. But we’re at a point where Google is trying to replicate the real-world experience with these brands, so you must build a brand. That’s not to say you can’t drive traffic and make revenue from search. You can. You just have to be strategic about the keywords you’re going after, and it’s going to be just a bigger collection of those lower search volume, longer tail keywords. And that’s also. The benefit of AI is that you can expect the long tail traffic to get even bigger because Google can now handle longer queries as a function of generative AI. Previously, the limitation on how long a query could be was 32 words. Now, I think they can expand further than that because they can understand longer queries and more in-depth, and so, as a result, the long tail will be a bigger opportunity than before. It will be easier for these smaller brands to compete there because, you know, big brands may not have content for those super long tail queries so that you can build a business there. 

29:52

Plenty of businesses have done it by making really bad content, right? If you look at every e-commerce site, you will see that they have, or not every, but many e-commerce sites. They have those product listing pages that are every permutation of every query that people are searching for, based on internal search. They throw some content on the bottom, and it works really well. Well, how about you make good content for those queries, and then you drive the traffic that way? So, yeah, you can still be David versus Goliath, just not on a keyword like TV. Right, it’s got to be like, what’s the best TV for traveling in a car with three kids? That’s the query where you need to win. 

Danny Gavin Host

30:28

Awesome. Thank you for giving me hope. How far are we from the SERP changing and having an AI overview? What do you think? 

Mike King Guest

30:37

I think Google does want to go there to some degree. 

30:39

I think how far we are will be a function of how they can monetize that, right? Like there was a demo that didn’t get a ton of views, but it was a demo when they were launching all the Gemini stuff, where they had these bespoke UIs where, based on what your search was, they built a UI in real-time, what those results would be like and how they would present them. And it was all based on generative AI and your query. And I think that’s an exciting way to do things because it limits it to a series of options, but only those that align with your intent and what you’re ultimately looking to do. So I think that, yes, Google does want to get to this space where, you know, it’s like the Star Trek computer. You just get precisely what you need and nothing else. But I don’t know that that will be monetizable in the way that Google has been printing money for the last 25 years. 

Danny Gavin Host

31:35

And that’s the hardest part. So the question is, will there be a competitor who comes and figures it out, and then Google goes away? But it’s difficult to who knows? 

Mike King Guest

31:43

Yeah, I don’t think that’s realistic in the short term because, you know, what Google has is 25 years of data to indicate what we want to see, and I think you know from using other search engines. You perform a search, and you’re like, this is like 70% there. That other 30% makes Google so sticky for people, and I don’t think that search GPT will be the answer until they have enough data. But the reality is that Google search usage to this day is 100x higher than chat GPT usage, and when I last measured this, 40% of users went from chat GPT back to Google. Because generative AI is inherently a broken product with a lot of hallucinations, many users still want to verify their information. 

32:31

So, I don’t think that search GPT will be the answer in the short term. I believe that the other aspect of it is that Google doesn’t have the same costs as these generative AI companies because Google makes its own chips. In contrast, everyone else is beholden to NVIDIA, and NVIDIA can’t make enough fast enough. So, people will run out of money faster than Google, and Google will have plenty of time to look around and see all these other products, take the best components, and then build a better version. The last component is that Gemini is baked into several multi-billion user products, such as Gmail, docs, etc. So, no matter what, you are using Google’s generative AI, and Google’s just going to get better. And then, unless ChatGPT does something dramatically better, which they could, I don’t think they will beat Google at this game. 

Danny Gavin Host

33:28

So, at the end of 2024, moving into 2025, are there any traditional SEO tactics or SEO work that you feel people should stop doing or maybe focus less on? 

Mike King Guest

33:40

Yeah, the volume game, and I understand that the volume game is a large part of my monthly recurring revenue. But people need to focus on quality, the content they’re creating, and then quality and the links they build. So when I repeat quality, I mentioned it a bit before, like Google is giving more value to links that drive traffic, links from pages that drive traffic, and pages that are running well. So you need to focus more on getting your links from there, and you don’t necessarily need a thousand of them to perform, whereas right now, most people are like, okay, well, that site has 100 links from DA40s, I’m going to get 105 links from DA46s or something like that, and you don’t have to do that. The noise on the web it creates is exactly what Google doesn’t want, right? Google is also crawling less and indexing less, so you need to focus on making content. That’s great. It bit into the world of Mike King, the musician and the rapper. 

Danny Gavin Host

35:03

Who are your top three musical influencers or influences, and why? 

Mike King Guest

35:08

Some of your viewers may not have the same context for rap as me, but I’m going to list them anyway: Ghostface Killer, who is from the Wu-Tang Clan; Method Man, who is also from the Wu-Tang Clan and a rapper by the name of Pharoah Monch. So Method Man was the person who made me want to rap. I heard his first album, and I was like, “Yo, I want to try that.” And over time, you just get better at it. 

35:31

And then Ghostface, I mean, I think his style, not just as a rapper but just as he likes presents, he’s just so cool and so interesting and, you know, so visually compelling in how he, you know, tells his stories in music and also just like the way he dresses and things like that, like those have always had big influences on me. And then Pharoah Monge is just the best rapper, right? Like. And then Pharoah Monch is just the best rapper, right? Like stylistically, lyrically, and so on. Many people who rap are like a direct descendant of how he raps. So yeah, those three guys definitely changed my life regarding hip-hop. 

Danny Gavin Host

36:32

Lovely, and I live in Houston, Texas. We’ve got a couple of decent rappers that come from our town. Any thoughts on H-Town Rap? 

Mike King Guest

36:41

Man, I love UGK. They’re fantastic. There’s this guy named K Reno from out in Houston, and he was an incredible lyricist. I love rap from everywhere, man, and there are nuances of how people do things in every region, even overseas, and she’s like, yo, that’s dope like I like, you know, the regional sound or whatever. So, yeah, those are the two groups that come to mind for me from Houston, but there’s, you know, Paul Wall and all those other guys, too, that have their flavor and stuff. But yeah, I love rap from everywhere. 

Danny Gavin Host

37:19

So, Mike, can you tell our listeners when and how they can get their hands on or stay in the loop about your upcoming book? 

Mike King Guest

37:25

Yeah, just follow me on all the things at iPullRank, and I’ll post updates here and there. I believe it’s for pre-order on Target and Amazon. But when it comes out, we’re going to make a lot of noise with this book, so you’ll know Exactly. 

Danny Gavin Host

37:43

Awesome. Well, Mike, thank you so much for your time today. This was really, really awesome. Thank you for being a guest on the Digital Marketing Mentor, and thank you, listeners, for tuning in. We’ll speak with you next time.