Bloggers highlight: Sam Crocker (@samuelcrocker)
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Bloggers highlight: Sam Crocker (@samuelcrocker)

31st December 2010

The bloggers who really make this blog deserve some attention and that is what we’re doing this week. This week I highlighted all the bloggers going up to the new year. See what they wrote, look at how their year was and what their expectations are. A digital thank you for their work.

Last but not at all least is Sam Crocker, our very own American! Though if you hear him you wouldn’t know that because he sound as British as most of the other bloggers here. Why is Sam last in this list? Well because he came in last :). Just before his move from Distilled to OMD.

A few questions

I asked Sam the same a couple of questions as the others about 2010 and 2011:

What was your highlight of 2010?

Personally it was speaking at SMX London. It was my first speaking gig for me as an SEO and was a bit of a breakthrough for me – in that it opened up some new blogging and speaking opportunities. I never expected the presentation to go down as well as it did so was obviously very pleased.

What was the thing you least liked of 2010?

2010 was a very difficult year for me on a personal level as I lost two good friends this year. From an SEO perspective I would say the thing that I liked least would be the most recent round of changes to the Google SERPs and layout. It seems to me that the most recent round of changes and lack of attention paid to the issue of webspam has done our profession no favours and in my view has made the SERPs worse. We’ve spoken about this a lot (webmaster radio, blog posts, etc) but I think it’s an important issue and a weird situation when more SEOs are complaining about spammy results than Google. It seems like many of us in the community want to play by the “rules” but aren’t seeing the rewards. If Google doesn’t do something to combat this I can see users certainly start to make the shift over to Bing and other competitors.

What was your best post on State of Search in 2010?

Well I’ve only personally had one post on State of Search this year so I’m going to have to say that one would be MY best J. But I read a lot of great posts from my SoS colleagues this year – one of my favourites being “10 Ways to Increase your Twitter Followers & 10 Essential Tools to do it” by Sam Murray.

What are your expectations for 2011?

I think 2011 will be a VERY interesting year for the industry and for Google. Google have enjoyed a long time in the driver’s seat and have enjoyed a near search-monopoly for some time. However, as they spread their resources wider to tackle new areas of opportunity (e-commerce, mobile, social, etc) I wouldn’t be surprised to see them lose further search market share to Microsoft… I think a lot will come down to the ability of the major search engines to make friends with the social sphere and I think so far every indication is that Microsoft/Bing has done better in making friends and incorporating results with Facebook. From a strict SEO standpoint I would see an increased value of page speed and design (with adoption of site previews), a renewed focus on onpage, social further replacing the link graph (obviously not completely replacing it), and finally I think LDA will start to play a larger part in people’s playbook and approach to onpage SEO. I know that one’s going to take a while for people to believe in, but it does make sense and I do think it will become a part of the puzzle. Finally as personalised search becomes unavoidable I would expect to see savvy blue-chip companies integrate Google into their offline advertising much more.

His posts

He’s right, Sam only wrote one post on State of Search. His post “So You Want to Run an SEO Conference? Lessons from ProSEO” was however very insightful. We are hoping for more of that in 2011.

Sam I know how much the loss of Jaamit has struck you and I truly hope 2011 will be one hell of a brilliant year for you. You deserve it. As for State of Search: I’m looking forward to your content! Happy New Year!

About Sam Crocker

Check out Sam’s profile page
Company: OMD UK
All of his posts

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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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