Stone Temple Consulting is a Leading Digital Marketing Agency That Has Been Servicing Enterprise Organizations Since 2002. We are a results driven organization that has the expertise and know-how to create and execute a winning Internet Marketing plan for you.
Here’s what Eric Enge had to say about his company and the future of digital marketing:
For those who aren’t familiar with you and your company, please tell us a little more about your company
Stone Temple Consulting is a performance digital marketing agency that has clients ranging from start-ups to the Fortune 50. We help our clients find ways to obtain a sustainable competitive advantage by focusing on cutting edge digital marketing techniques in areas such as content marketing, SEO, and social media. We have grown to more than 70 people through client referrals, and by using modern marketing techniques (much like those we help our clients with) to attract companies to want to work with us.
Do you think the future of SEO depends only on interactive content ?
I think interactive content is great, but it’s not the be-all / end-all. SEO still has many aspects that involve basic technical setup so a search engine can understand your site better. This includes things such as building a great mobile site that launches super quickly, or schema, or not using coding constructs that a search engine can’t follow.
Also, even from a content perspective, without SEO involved, not every piece of content needs to be interactive.
The role of SEO keeps on changing after every Google update. Do you think SEO is the right term anymore?
I don’t think that the role of SEO does change after every Google update. In fact, I don’t think it’s really changed that much at all. The execution of SEO has changed over time, but the role remains the same: to help people obtain more traffic to their web sites, and to focus on traffic that has the potential to convert into more business.
But, I do agree that we need to view the overall role of SEO more broadly than we used to, so maybe we should call that something else. SEO is no longer simply doing things to cause search engines to send more traffic to your web site. For example, you might want a search engine to send more traffic to your app, in which case, a web site isn’t involved at all. And, if I want to get high quality links to a web site to drive more traffic to that site, today I’m probably thinking about that as content marketing. But, content marketing has a powerful PR impact as well.
In addition, social media is something that (IMO) should be used to drive visibility for your content marketing efforts. So now, all these things have to work together to form a greater whole. That’s why we call ourselves a digital marketing agency.
The Google algorithm has evolved over the years. Do you think it really benefits small businesses?
In many cases, it really doesn’t, but there do remain opportunities for small businesses. For example, make sure your local search game is in order. Make sure you claim your Google listing, get the info completely up to date, and maintain it. Then do the same for all the major yellow page sites out there. Many larger businesses don’t do that particularly well, so this can give a smaller biz an edge.
Also, be aggressive about trying new ideas, like pursuing featured snippets, or trying out other new things that Google offers. While you’re at it, don’t limit that mentality to Google. Try new things with social media platforms too. There is a lot of opportunity in Facebook videos or Facebook advertising, for example. Be careful though, if you’re going to try these things be prepared to make a serious investment in learning how to do them WELL.
How do SEO clients behave these days? Do you think their knowledge and awareness of SEO increased?
In many cases, yes it has. That said, there are still many situations where people don’t really get how it works. Sometimes it’s someone who is rooted in tactics that worked 5, 6, 7, years ago, or that are overly manipulative in their approach. We’ve fired clients that were not able to get over this level of misunderstanding. And, yes, sometimes we still encounter people who don’t even get the first few basics off SEO. But, the knowledge level is much higher than it was 5 years ago.
There are now only four Ads on top of the SERPs. Do you think Adwords is the only way to appear above the fold? What are your thoughts on the Google Monopoly?
Don’t forget featured snippets. These are a great way to get above the overall SERPs. Also, I just typed on “toaster ovens”, which is a highly commercial SERP. I see a row of shopping search results, along with 3 organic results above the fold.
Also, this notion of a Google Monopoly is a myth. You can read some of my thoughts on that here: http://searchengineland.com/competitive-threats-google-means-249772. One example cited in the article is the case of Product Searches. A recent Forrester study found (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/10/technology/google-shopping-competition-amazon-charging-retailers.html?_r=2&ref=technology) that 1/3 of product searches begin on Amazon, and only 13% of such searches begin on Google. Sounds like Amazon is kicking Google’s butt here. Even for informational queries, Google has tons of competition. Don’t like Google’s response? I’ll text my friends to see what they know about it.
So I see a Google that is under tremendous competitive pressure. Of course, they are also under the revenue pressure of being a public company, and that’s the other side of it. They want to get more revenue, but they have to balance short term revenue with the long term stability of their business.
