Michael King will give the afternoon keynote at SearchFest 2016, which is being held March 10th, 2016 at the Sentinel Hotel in Portland, Oregon. For more information or to purchase tickets, please click here.

See Michael King keynote SearchFest 20161) Please give us your background and tell us what you do for a living.

I am a marketing technologist, founder, and managing director of a performance marketing agency called iPullRank. We do Content Strategy, Solutions Architecture, Market Research, Earned, Owned and Paid Media for INC500 and Fortune 500 companies. I have a background in computer science, music, and working at network agencies and some search-focused firms doing digital marketing.

2) How has your background in music influenced your search marketing work?

I like to believe I approach things more creatively than average. I question all of the best practices and what the industry believes. As an emcee I was always very interested in the technical side of the rapping which of course translates to my deep interest in the technical components of search. All in all, I’d say that I my need to understand and capitalize on every possibility is very much what drives my approach to marketing in general and of course search marketing.

3) When you meet with new clients, what do they typically ask for and how does that differ from what they typically need?

Because I’m mostly known for being in the SEO space, that’s generally what people ask me for, but it’s rarely what or all they need. Moreoften than not people asking me to get them more traffic need CRO more than they need more traffic. So no matter what the lead is that comes through my inbox, I always ask them what their goal is first before we discuss a proposal. We’re all about solving business problems strategically.

4) You’re very visible in the search marketing community. What personal and professional benefits have you derived from your participation?

Personally, I’ve made a lot of great friends. I’ve been able to go to most of the places I’ve been on tour as a musician and really get the chance to experience them. Professionally, it’s created numerous opportunities and when I started iPullRank as an agency, the reputation I’d built made it easy for us to get great clients.

5) I remember you saying somewhere (not an exact quote) that musicians need to get creative in order to monetize their art in today’s marketplace. Can you expand upon that?

Sure, the record label used to be the business equivalent of a patron. It used to be that they could provide the infrastructure to create a success. At this point it’s no longer a guarantee or a requirement that a record label can get you there. It’s really about making the art stand out amongst the noise on your own, building an audience for yourself, and finding ways to keep that audience engaged. Then you can monetize accordingly. I feel like Tidal was a huge missed opportunity where a guy with influence like Jay Z could have really made that model into something.

6) What are the top 3 SEO mistakes that big brands make?

Internal Links – Big brand sites are so big, but they usually do not make it a priority to keep their internal linking structure clean. Too broken links or links to redirects. Those losses in link equity add up tremendously.

External Links – Big brands think of pages as campaigns and so they don’t recognize or maintain those links once things are sunsetted. I’ve seen clients with tens of millions of links pointing to broken targets and fixing that improves rankings pretty much overnight.

Too Many Cooks in the Content Kitchen – Content is one of those things where everyone owns it, so no one owns it. As a result much of the stuff coming out is not meeting the min spec for optimization.

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