Today I had a new experience. For the first time I took part in a jury for an award. And it was fun! I am one of the judges for the search engine marketing award in the Netherlands, which is being presented at Search Engine Strategies Amsterdam, later this month.

Being a judge is fun, it is a bit similar to looking at proposals, which I do for clients also. The big difference off course is that in this case the job is already done. When judging I took an extra good look at innovation. I believe its important that search marketing agencies innovate and  use the web to its fullest.

At the same conference I will be leading a panel on news and search in which amongst others Brent Payne. It will be a good conference by the looks of it. Joost de Valk together with BBP and Incisive Media has been busy with the program for some months now and I must say, it looks good! Bill Hunt, who I have seen several times this year, will come as will Dixon Jones and off course Mike Grehan. But don’t forget to look at some of the Dutch speakers like Eduard, and I am especially looking forward to hearing David Brinks & Ramon Eijkemans talk about SEO copywriting.

Are you going to be at SES Amsterdam? Come say hi!

After just returning from speaking at A4U a new challenge awaits. In two weeks time SMX London starts. This event is organized by Third Door Media, the company behind the Search Engine Land. Host is Chris Sherman who I met for the first time in New York a couple of months ago. I’m very much looking forward to this SMX for a couple of reasons.

Speakers
First of all the conference has got a lot, and I really mean a lot, of good speakers present on the speakerslist. Names like Rand Fishkin, Christine Churchill and Mike Grehan are always good to listen to. The quality is very high, which guarantees a good time.

Networking
Second at this conference I’m seeing a lot of people I like again. There’s Lisa Ditlefsen and Jon Mayers, both bloggers at Searchcowboys, which I really look forward to seeing again. And there are more people, both on and off the speakerslist who are great to meet up with. People like Dave Naylor, again Mike Grehan, Mikkel deMib Svendsen, Dixon Jones and Judith Lewis are great to talk to and hang out with.

Speaking!
Third, a very important one! I’m speaking myself! Originally I was supposed to speak at two sessions. The linkbuilding session, which I also performed in at A4U, got cancelled because SMX wants to keep more focus on the advanced track. They therefore canceled the entire track in which also my linkbuilding session was placed. But I’m scheduled to speak in another session.

On the first day I will talk in the Search Issues Track in the session "Searchscape: Latest Stats About The Search Engines". I want to give the audience a view on what’s going on in the European market: which search engines are the most used, what are the differences in Europe, how do people (differently) use these search engines and where are we heading. It’s a subject with a lot of numbers, but I will make something special out of it!

Finally why I look forward to SMX London is the final part: London. A great city where I always like to come.

If you want to see me speak or just want to be there because the conference is so good, come! At Searchcowboys you can get a 15% discount, I’m hoping to see you there!

Last week I spent two days on A4UExpo, a conference in Amsterdam focussed on the Affiliate market. It was one of the best conferences I have ever attended.

I was at A4U Expo to cover the event for Searchcowboys (look at the reports on the special event channel on Searchcowboys) and as a speaker. I was the last speaker on the last day, which normally means no-one is there. Not this time though, the room was filled with enough people .

At my presentation, which was part of three presentations about linkbuilding, I took a different angle on linkbuilding, namely the one of a publisher. I talked about how to (not) adress the media. Below my presentation!

I was going to talk about the same subject at SMX London, but sadly enough a track got canceled which also means my presentation was. I’m speaking on another subject also, but I’ll inform you about that later on!

I’m visiting Le Web at this moment. LeWeb is one of the biggest conferences about the Web in Europe. This morning the fourth edition kicked off. I wrote posts about it on DutchCowboys and Searchcowboys. There you can read the reports on for example the talk of Nikesh Arora, one of Google’s major players in Europe.

Until now (lunchtime) LeWeb has not yet brought that what I expected. The atmosphere last year seemed a lot better and inspiring. Somehow it seems as if the economic downfall has hit this conference too. The heating is off (cold!) and the food was gone very fast. And that was not because there are a lot of people here, but because there was litlle food… Finally getting online was a disaster. After almost two hours I succeeded to get online on a press-spot. Not through the ever slow wifi but through a cable.

Let’s hope things get better soon. The list of speakers could do it, and the visitors off course, because there are a lot of interesting people here!

Do you want to follow LeWeb? You can do that! Below you can see the stream and there is a live community on which you can follow LeWeb.

And off course you can stay tuned at Dutch Cowboys and Searchcowboys!

SES Hamburg is finished! I’ve posted an article on Dutch Cowboys about the second day (earlier about day 1). Below my thoughts about SES Hamburg in video. With that I close these SES reports.