This week I spent some time in Manchester for SASCON, a conference organized by a group of Manchester SEOs in an effort to attract attention to the fact that there is more than London when it comes to search marketing in the UK. After a day of conference (and two nights of networking and fun) we can safely say the organization has succeeded.

The conference was a big success  I think. There were many good speakers and the organizers did a great job in how they took care of the speakers. We as speakers all agreed on the fact they did that very good. Which is important when organizing a conference. I am already looking forward to next year, where the organisation wants to make things even better.

I was on two panels this show, the black hat / white hat panel and the Running a Pan-European Search Campaign panel. In the last one I did a presentation on how to handle the different cultural elements in Europe. It was in line with a post I did last year for Searchengineland. Below you can see the presentation on Slideshare.

“…I’ll make it, anywhere…” No, I’m not moving to New York, but yes, I am going there. This coming week its SES New York and I am very happy to attent! I found a couple of sponsors (amongst which Leapfish and SEOSamba) to support me in going there so I will be writing about and twittering about SES New York this week!

SES New York is THE biggest event to visit when it comes to search events and I was there last year, with amongst others Roy Huiskes, Johannes Markusse and Evert Veldhuijzen and had a fantastic time. This time sadly enough those guys won’t be coming along but I will be meeting up with a lot of good friends like Lisa and Jon Myers, Dave and Becky Naylor, Mel Carson, Matt McGowan and many more. And this time I will be looking to meet new people also!

I will also be doing a live radioshow coming from the Webmasterradio booth at SES where Brasco will be running things. We’ll try to get Roy in as well! I’ll keep you posted on Twitter (both personal and StateofSearch), maybe here but mostly on State of Search! Be sure to check it out!

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!

In a year there are a couple of months in which the search marketing industry tends to organize their events. The first couple of months are February and March. This week therefore my first period of traveling and speaking starts again. In London Search Engine Strategies 2010 starts. I will be speaking on the second day, but I am also very much looking forward to both the program and the fact I’m meeting up with a lot of my friends again.

Speaking

As said, I am speaking at SES London this year. Which makes me very proud. Only a few years back I visited SES London as one of the anonymous visitors, blogging for Dutch Cowboys. Now I am on stage. And I am talking about that route. How I got from sitting in the audience to being pretty well known in the industry by using social media. I will post the presentation here soon! Continue Reading »

Last year I did a clinic search engine marketing for beginners for the DDMA, the Dutch Dialogue Marketing Association, for whom I’m currently also doing a strategic project. The clinic was a big success, both for me (I enjoyed it very much) as for the people taking the course.

Because of the success we decided to do the clinic again this Quarter. On top of that we are working on some more (related) clinics, but more about that some other time. For now the demand for the clinic is good, already a week after we announced this new clinic more than half of the available seats were already sold. But there is still room, so if you are interested you are more than welcome to register for the clinic. Even if you are not a DDMA-member. DDMA members do get a big discount! 

Check out all the information (in Dutch!) here.