Eric Enge on Growing & Selling a Successful Digital Agency, SEO, Content & More

He’s been involved in the internet since the early 1990s when he played a role in AOL building up its subscriber base.

During our interview, Eric talked about his 20-year journey as a digital marketer – how he started a career in technology, the struggles he’s faced and overcome, the lessons learned along the way, and why he decided it was time to sell Stone Temple.

Listen as he shares how his early SEO days looked like (hint: it involved some link schemes) and why he owes a great debt to ex-Googler Matt Cutts.

Eric also offers amazing advice on operating and expanding an agency, hiring employees, communicating the value of SEO to potential clients, and investing in thought leadership.

Show Notes

• Eric shares that he was gregarious as a child (but took a sharp turn into being introverted at age 10), joining the high school swim team, his Norwegian roots, and growing up in Massachusetts. [05:24]
• By junior high school, Eric got into history and within two years had read about 200 different books from cover to cover. [7:50]
• How building a Heathkit computer at home while he was out of college served as Eric’s first foray into technology. [8:15]
• Eric reveals why he ended up going to three different colleges. [10:31]
• On working as a hardware designer after graduating from Northeastern and his experience installing the Loran-C control center at a naval base in France. [21:40]
• Eric on moving onto Phoenix Technologies (the dominant provider of BIOS software worldwide), running his own start-up ventures within the company, and getting involved in America Online – helping the company become the largest ISP on planet Earth at that time. [27:26]
• When and how Eric transitioned from doing business development consulting to “getting traffic from some search engines.” [34:33]
• How he learned to drive search engine traffic and generate leads in the early days of SEO. [39:00].
• Eric shares how Google’s permanent ban on his education online search site led him to attend his first conference, SES Chicago, and plead his case to then-Googler Matt Cutts. [41:24]
• On being given a chance and the importance of paying it forward. [46:00]
• We learn where the name “Stone Temple” came from. [48:12]
• When Eric decided to expand Stone Temple and started hiring people. [49:34]
• Growing pains and takeaways when expanding an agency. [54:05]
• What were Eric’s biggest challenges in operating an agency? [56:33]
• How do you communicate the value of SEO to potential clients? Eric shares the best approach that he’s learned over the years. [59:25]
• Eric talks about how he managed to stay up to date with search while building a successful company at the same time. [1:02:15]
• If Eric could redo one thing about how he built Stone Temple, this is what he would change. [1:05:17]
• What made Eric decide that it was time to sell Stone Temple? [1:07:52]
• The challenges of integrating Stone Temple with Perficient and how the team reacted to the news. [1:10:52]
• On letting go of the Stone Temple brand. [1:13:16]
• When and how Eric really committed to consistently writing and blogging. [1:14:41]
• What is Eric’s philosophy on writing and sharing content? [1:18:09]
• Eric discusses how the “Here’s Why” video series came about and its evolution over the years. [1:20:18]
• Here’s why the Mythbusters episode is Eric’s favorite video from the series. [1:23:51]
• The best piece of professional advice Eric received was from Colonel Potter of the TV show “M*A*S*H”. [1:25:14]
• The worst piece of SEO advice he’s ever heard. [1:27:23]
• What Eric is most excited about in SEO right now. [1:29:34]
• What’s next for Eric Enge? [1:32:14]