Mike King

Mike King is the founder and chief executive of iPullRank, a New York, New York, agency that handles SEO, content strategy and generative AI search work for large brands. He came to marketing after eight years as an independent rapper, and he became one of the most familiar speakers at search marketing conferences.

Learning to Code in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

He discovered computers at 12 in the early 1990s and taught himself QBasic, then Pascal and C, from help files and coding books he bought at Barnes & Noble, as he told the All About AI podcast from Wheelhouse DMG. He earned his first internet money at 14 or 15, when the owner of a web host he kept hacking paid him about $150 to write tutorials instead, and in high school he interned at Microsoft building websites.

His parents moved him from Philadelphia to a private school in Connecticut because they worried he would get into trouble at home. To stay connected to his Philadelphia roots he threw himself into hip-hop, including graffiti, breakdancing, DJing and rapping.

Making Music After Howard University

He enrolled at Howard University to study computer science, but he found he wanted to make music more than he wanted to code. For eight years he made a living as an indie rapper, playing across the United States, Canada and Europe, twice in Australia and once in Africa.

Taking an SEO Job After a Bicycle Accident

In 2006 he was hurt in a bicycle accident with no health insurance, and he needed a job to pay his medical bills. The first place to hire him was an SEO agency that valued his development background. He later called it a chop shop, with 30 people selling by phone and five doing the work, and he taught himself what worked by answering calls the production manager ignored and staying until 10 at night until the owner gave him that manager's job.

He planned to quit after three months for his first European tour. The agency asked him to keep working from the road, so he carried a heavy Dell laptop onto trains and uploaded his work whenever he found WiFi.

Finding the Search Community at Razorfish

At Razorfish in Philadelphia he worked 24 hours a week as a contractor on brands such as Polo Ralph Lauren, which his team got to number one for the word "sweaters." A touring friend mentioned on a train in Sweden that his cousin was Rand Fishkin, the founder of Moz. King wrote to Fishkin, started posting on the Moz community blog, and after a move to Publicis Modem in New York he paid his own way to MozCon in 2011.

Watching Wil Reynolds speak there changed his plans. He recalled thinking, "Oh wow, they let black people do this. Cool," and he pitched a talk to SMX East right away. The talks that followed led to a director of marketing role at the agency iAcquire.

Founding iPullRank in New York

After iAcquire and one more agency job, he decided to start his own shop. On the iPullRank about page he says he saw a disconnect between how agencies operate and what clients need, and he argues that hourly billing rewards agencies for showing activity instead of results. "I wanted to build a team of incredibly smart and creative people that could execute on solving any type of problem," he says there. The agency describes itself as Black-owned and works mostly in e-commerce, financial services and media.

Reading Google Search as Information Retrieval

His recent work reads Google as an information retrieval system that can be studied. He published a technical analysis of internal Google Search documentation that leaked onto GitHub, comparing it with what Google had said in public and in antitrust testimony. He has also been writing a book, The Science of SEO, which he describes as an information retrieval book for SEO practitioners built from patents, white papers and his own experience.

Personal Life

King is based in Brooklyn, New York, and he met his wife at the SMX East conference where he gave one of his first talks. His iPullRank bio says he does his best work with a messy desk, Nike Air Max 1s on his feet and Snoh Aalegra playing.