About 2 weeks ago I spent almost the entire work week somewhere ‘up north’ in the UK. To be more specific, I was in Ripon, above Leeds. It is a stunning place which has everything a former history-student loves: there is a cathedral (really!) which has “secret passages” and was built on top of a small chapel, there is a really great country side, there is someone who blows a horn at the four corners of the obelisk in the Market place every night at 9PM to tell the town everything is safe. And lets not forget the houses which look like you walked onto the set of a movie which plays in the 16th or 17th century. Last but not least there is a really nice restaurant, called the Old Deanery, where you are not just getting great food, you really get the feeling you are getting an inside in the every-day life of Ripon. The owners are very open and hospitable and drinks after diner have never been so pleasant.

So why this free review? Well because I liked it off course! When in Ripon I had a very good week and I want to share that with you. But I wanted to share a little bit more. I was in Ripon, not for a holiday, but with a purpose. I was visiting one of my SEO-friends, Dave Naylor and his wife Becky and his company Bronco. It wasn’t just a pleasure trip, me and Dave have been working hard in the week on stuff which will be announced soon. The trip however is worth mentioning for several reasons, next to the great town of Ripon.

The search industry sometimes is just like high school. You have the geeks/ nerds, you have the popular girls and guys (who in this industry very well can be geeks ;- ) ) and you have those who want to be friends with the popular guys and girls. This makes that  sometimes people get a wrong view on how people actually are. If you are a ‘rockstar’ you might live like a rockstar.

It sometimes even gets worse when you are not in the industry. Then people tend to think SEOs are lazy and they don’t have to work hard, because all they do is ‘trick’ the search engines.

Off course all of this is wrong and most of us know that, at least I hope they do. But the week with Dave made me realize that sometimes we just need to say it out loud: SEOs are just people, who work hard for their money.

When talking to Dave in that week he asked me what I thought of the way he lived and how I looked at it. I told him I liked the way of life and I liked his company a lot. It reminded me of the first company I worked in when I first started to work in the Internet. Its a very informal company which has a flat organization. Dave is one of the guys who sits with the guys.

And that was one of the things which really came forward that week: the “rockstar” Dave Naylor is “just” one of the guys at his office. The smartest guy at his office, yes, but as a person, just one of the guys. If you’ve met Dave at conferences you will know he’s always in for a bit of laughter and fun. I saw the every-day life of an SEO in Ripon UK, and apart from that rural village, its not much different than how he is when you meet him at conferences. He’s having a lot of fun at the office.

So it occurred to me it had to be said: there are many wrong views on SEO and SEOs as a person. Sometimes its good to see that an SEO is just another hard working person in a rural town : ). The search market has ‘rockstars’ but ‘rockstars’ are people too.

Well enough with the ‘sermon’. In Ripon I had a lot of fun and through this post I wanted to thank Becky and Dave again for their incredible hospitality. Thanks guys! It was fun, we had great food, drinks, laughter and we even went to see a Leeds United football game. I will always be an Ajax-fan first and foremost, but Leeds United sure will be on my ‘to follow’ list.

Last but not least, have you ever seen Dave Naylor sing? Here’s your chance:

PS, I almost forgot to mention I met “Bob the campervan“, who fits in great with the historic town

From Bas van den Beld Bas van den Beld: Speaker, Trainer, Moderator and writer

Google is the ‘best’ search engine out there, at least that is what most people believe. Why? Because Google gives back the most relevant results. Or do they? Sometimes even Google ‘messes up’ so to speak. When looking for an image to go along a post about blogging I wrote today on State of Search I found these remarkable results:

Quite remarkable is it? There must be a logical explanation, maybe its personalized search, but most probably its because there are so many people blogging about their cats.

Of course I also checked this search on Bing Images (which looks much better than Google’s by the way) and to be fair: they didn’t give me the results I wanted either, but they didn’t find that much cats as Google did… It’s time for search engines to implement the user intent they have been talking about lately.

From Bas van den Beld Bas van den Beld: Speaker, Trainer, Moderator and writer

Sometimes it can be very interesting to look back into the past. As an historian I know that you can get new insights from looking back. With 2010 just starting and many bloggers looking forward, a view back in time can give you a lot of insight.

• Orkut: de social networktool van Google
• The Deskbar: a sort of Google toolbar, only in the bottom of the screen
• Google Answers
• Froogle
• Blogger
• Google Adsense, with a feature in it which shows ‘related searches’

From Bas van den Beld Bas van den Beld: Speaker, Trainer, Moderator and writer

I ran into this video below yesterday. I hadn’t seen it before, and was pleasantly surprised. Danny Sullivan, probably the best known search guru in the world, did a keynote at "Where 2.0" last May. He talked about local search and what issues the ‘normal guy’ could have with local. It’s a very good keynote because Sullivan knows how to combine humor with lessons and search and is able to present the issues in a language anyone, not just the search community, can understand. It’s a killer tip therefore: watch this!

From Bas van den Beld Bas van den Beld: Speaker, Trainer, Moderator and writer

On Dutch Cowboys Eduard posted a picture today which speaks for itself. The website E-marketer researched Social Media and shopping behavior. They looked at the resources people use to get to their purchase. The most important resource: search. Off course .

From Bas van den Beld Bas van den Beld: Speaker, Trainer, Moderator and writer

As my loyal readers will know I am a fanatic blogger for Dutch Cowboys. And I also sometimes post a message on MobileCowboys and SearchCowboys…

Some ‘insiders’ know that my involvement with Dutch Cowboys is a little bit more than just blogging. I sometimes do some project management for the websites. And my involvement will only grow. I’m going to play a big part in the new version of SearchCowboys.

The current site will dissapear in this format. Instead we will develop a European SearchCowboys. An website written in English looking at search marketing with a focus on the European Market.

And I will play a big part in it… What kind of part? In any case the part of blogger and a little bit more.. I will get back on that in the coming weeks. For now I’m looking for your help. When I start blogging on www.searchcowboys.com I will need sources. I want to know what’s going on in the European Search Market.

Off course I already have a lot of sources. But I want more! (I’m kind of a news junkie ). And maybe I’m missing that one special site. So: wich search-websites should I follow according to you to stay up-to-date on Search in Europe?

To give you an idea, these sites I already follow (amongst others):

http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/
http://www.multilingual-search.com/
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/
http://searchengineland.com/
http://www.seroundtable.com/
http://searchenginewatch.com/
http://sphinn.com/
http://linkspiel.de/
http://yoast.com/
http://www.mattcutts.com/
http://www.kaushik.net/
http://www.chapter42.com/

Most of these sites focus on the US. Off course that’s also important, but I’m looking for a focus on the European market. Who will help me? Leave a comment!

From Bas van den Beld Bas van den Beld: Speaker, Trainer, Moderator and writer

This month Google celebrates its ten year anniversary. Reason for many bloggers and media to stop and look back. And why not. Google has in the past decade, changed the way we all use the Internet.

For ten years, most of us almost daily open the white, quiet Google Homepage. The "original" Google homepage is still recognizable in today’s homepage, but in the course of the years more has changed than you might suspect. An overview.

1998

The first Google homepage is characterized by a number of aspects. First is the exclamation point behind Google, something they no longer use, but you see at rivals Yahoo! In addition, the sentence under the searchbox: "Index contains ~ 25 million pages (soon to be bigger)”. And it got ‘bigger’ allright…

1999

A year later, the homepage is very different. What strikes are of course the links below the search box but even more striking is perhaps the term "Beta" under the logo. A term widely used at Google…

2000

In 2000 the exclamation mark disappears behind the name Google. What is striking is that you can choose which language you want. The bottom of the page is now more subtle. Interesting are the two dots right of the logo for the about-and the jobs page. Those were only seen in 2001.

2001

In 2001 we see the entrance of two separate search items on the homepage: the Web Directory and Google Groups. The directory will not live long. 2001 is also the year of the attacks in New York, Google (of course) paid attention to that on the homepage by giving their condolences to the victims and a direct link to news items about 9-11.

2002

In 2002 the homepage feels a lot calmer, perhaps it is the top tabs that have appeared. The homepage is becoming more familiar. The link to Adwords is striking.

2003

In 2003 there was little change in the homepage. We see an extra tab (News), but those are all changes. Besides the number of crawled web pages. While in 2002 still 2,469,940,685 pages were indexed in 2003 its 3,083,324,652. See here the growth of the Google index.

2004

In 2004, the tabs got a different look, no longer blocks but ‘normal’ links. There are also more tabs than a year before. Thus we see, among others, (the unsuccessful) Froogle. In 2004 we also see the release of Picasa.

2005

In 2005 Froogle is still there, but we see another important tab appears: Local. This tab we currently see no return, local integrated into Universal Search. Any other change the font seems to be that bold to be counterproductive.

2006

In 2006 for the first time we see the introduction of the ‘Personalized Home’ the current iGoogle. For the first time you can log onto the homepage of Google. The tab "Maps" is the most striking new addition.

2007

The 2007- homepage is the closest to the current homepage. Most important change is the relocation of the tabs to the top left of the screen. New items are Images, Video, Mail and News and more can be shown by clicking the ‘more’ button.

2008

The most notable change in 2008 is that there is no change compared with a year earlier. That is quite remarkable, because until this year each year you see changes. Or are we going to get a striking change in the coming months?

From Bas van den Beld Bas van den Beld: Speaker, Trainer, Moderator and writer

Everyone wants (many) links. Links are a signal of life on the web. Others referring to you is recognition of your work. And for many, even more important: links are important for your findability in search engines (especially Google). With a few good links you can get a significant boost in traffic.

So everyone is looking for links. There are a number of experts in this field worldwide. Some of them are from The Netherlands and Belgium. Dave Lorrez of the website E-tail.be knew how to bring some of these experts ‘virtually’ together and questions them about linkbuilding.

The result is a very interesting post (in Dutch) with many things you can learn for everyone who is interested in linkbuilding. The experts Peter van der Graaf, Roy Huiskes, Bart De Waele, Eduard Blaquière, Joost de Valk, Martijn Anschütz, Wiep Knol and Alain Sadon ten questions were raised about linkbuilding:

1. How & Where to find links to Dutch sites
2. Linkbuilding for traffic or purely technical (PageRank)
3. What about link buying: themes sponsors, etc
4. So what are ‘good’ links
5. Does the Google toolbar PageRank have any valu. Is the Dutch Social Media world an option?
7. The importance of internal links on your website
8. Siloing and the rel = "nofollow" tag
9. Can we expect changes in the near future
10. Favorite tool linkbuilding

The experts give a few important tips which I do not withhold from you:

You do not need to have thousands of links. "A few good sites, with the right anchor text often works much better than a mass of links." (Says Roy Huiskes)

Do not buy links. "I advise my customers not in any way to start paying for links with the purpose of scoring higher in search engines." (Says Alain Sadon)

Pagerank is much less important than sometimes suggested. "It hardly plays a role since it is an indicator that has no accurate picture." (Says Martijn Anschutz)

Make sure that a link is an added value for those who click on the link, in other words, care for relevant links. "A link is ‘good’ if it adds value to visitors to the web page link." (Says Eduard Blaquière)

Finally, they share some tips on tools:
SEO Link Analysis Firefox plugin
SEO for FireFox
SEO-Spyglass
Web Developer
Yahoo Site Explorer
Hub finder
Link Diagnosis

And of course, Google itself…

The article gives a good overview of what you have to take in account of when it comes to linkbuilding and is therefore an absolute must for anyone who wants to start linkbuilding. Unfortunately, even here the ‘golden tip’ isn’t given, but it is certainly useful. So start reading!

From Bas van den Beld Bas van den Beld: Speaker, Trainer, Moderator and writer

This morning I saw this video on Dutch Cowboys. In a funny and cynical way it is made clear how much influence Google could have. If it’s true? Be the judge…

From Bas van den Beld Bas van den Beld: Speaker, Trainer, Moderator and writer

The series SEO Roadshow on Dutch Cowboys is increasingly beginning to take shape. The third interview has now been put online. This time with Avinash Kaushik. This very intriging man was interviewed by Joost and the podcast can be listened to at Dutch Cowboys.

Kaushik is amongst others writer of the book ‘Web Analytics: An Hour A Day’, a must for anyone working professionally on a website.

In his role as’ Analytics Evangelist "at Google he travels around the world to discuss webanalytics. He is therefore a welcome speaker.

Listen to the interview on Dutch Cowboys!

From Bas van den Beld Bas van den Beld: Speaker, Trainer, Moderator and writer