A summer interview with… Crispin Sheridan: “pepper your social media content with your search keywords”
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A summer interview with… Crispin Sheridan: “pepper your social media content with your search keywords”

11th August 2010

There are many great search-experts out there. We decided we wanted to give some extra attention to some of them. Therefore we will be interviewing some of these experts. During the entire summer you will be served with short interviews with influential people in the industry. You will be seeing interviews with the likes of Joost de Valk, Marcus Tandler, Chris Sherman, Mike Grehan and Danny Sullivan, and off course our bloggers! Be aware that some interviews will be published in the newsletter!

Today:Crispin Sheridan, Senior Director of Search Marketing at SAP.

1- Can you introduce yourself in one paragraph?

My name is Crispin Sheridan and I’m the Senior Director of Search Marketing at SAP in New York. I’m part of our Global Demand Generation team, and I established and run the Search practice at SAP. I cover PPC, SEO and Partner search enablement so they work within our strategy rather than competing against us. Search at SAP is now fully centralized and globally funded and is run with both an in-house team and agency support. I hail from the UK, lived in Bahrain until going to college and work in Toronto. I moved to New York with SAP in 2001.

2- What are you doing this summer?

At the office I’m working on rolling out our partner search platform while kicking our SEO work into high gear. PPC continues to pay off well for us. I’m preparing to speak at SES in San Francisco as part of “ClickZ’s Connected Marketing Week”. This year it includes the special ClickZ International Marketing Forum and I’m doing the keynote with Bill Hunt on Friday August 20th.

3- What is the most hottest subject in search at the moment, what should every SEO be looking into

The competition – it changes so quickly and impacts your own results radically. Understanding this and having your finger on the pulse of what your competitors (any site that ranks for your key words) are doing and where they are going will help keep you a step ahead constantly improving your performance.

4- What do you think is the “state of search” at the moment, is the industry doing good?

The search industry is still growing at amazing rates – so in a sense the “industry” – that is the engines – are doing very well. However, I think there is so much un-optimized search being conducted – poorly selected key words, poorly optimized landing pages and hum-drum offers. Yes many new companies are getting into search, but many of them are doing it in the early rudimentary ways. Upside? There is still so much opportunity for improvement!

5- What is your favorite website, apart from your own?

www.cellartracker.com – the perfect mix of UGC and a great UX – tracks your wine collection and the comments of millions of members!

6- Can “social marketing / media” and search survive apart from each other?

Parts of each can survive apart, but more and more, I want to know what my network finds valuable, not just what “everyone” does.

7- What’s your search tip for the summer?

Take your best performing key words from both paid and organic search and pepper your social media content with these and the associated offers – then return the favor with well performing assets from social media marketing activities and loop them into your search activities.

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Written By
Bas van den Beld is an award winning Digital Marketing consultant, trainer and speaker. He is the founder of State of Digital and helps companies develop solid marketing strategies.
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